


Dukat, in Agat: Testify - Part I

by BrokenBlade



Series: Agathe, like Dukat [5]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Daddy Issues, Dick Appreciation, F/M, Grief, Guilt, Self-Loathing, Semi-conscious denial, Shame, Trust Issues, beautiful men, edging (sexual), memory repression, self-rejection, self-sabotage, the plank in your own eye, trippy nightmares, undying lust for Gul Dukat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:20:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27777505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrokenBlade/pseuds/BrokenBlade
Summary: Agathe can run and Agathe can hide.But she can't escape what's inside her.And what's hidden is coming to light.After 'Caught', MaLady335 called out Agathe as "someone in conflicted distress".If you ask Agathe, she'll tell you 'Testify' is her true burning tale to tell. The core shit.This isthedestination to which 'Skinned', 'Apology', and 'Fragrance' have been leading.I didn't realize how long it would need to be, so I split it into two parts.Unfortunately, I still need to write Part II.Ireallywish it would spring fully formed from my head, like Athena from Zeus.If sucking Gul Dukat's cock could make that happen, I'd even pay that price.I'd even do that.To any readers who have persevered through all the previous Agathe stories - I love you all! Thank you for reading these.
Relationships: Dukat (Star Trek)/Original Female Character(s), Julian Bashir/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Agathe, like Dukat [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946584
Comments: 29
Kudos: 5





	1. Worm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SparklyQuarians](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SparklyQuarians/gifts).



> _repeated note here:_  
>  Every time somebody leaves a kudos: I want you to know that touches me deeply. ❤ It makes me feel like - somehow - this story speaks to you. Thank you. ❤
> 
> To melitta4ever: Thank you for cracking that bullshit whip as I sift through the mess in my mind. You are worth your weight in gold as my quasi alpha reader.
> 
> Thank you SparklyQuarians for inspiring me with your vibrant story weaving!  
> And, of course - as ever - for loving this _fucking_ Gul Dukat.

  
I am the worm.  
  
I bet you didn’t expect the worm to speak to you and introduce itself. You didn’t expect the worm to speak to _anyone_ – who would expect the worm to speak to _anyone?_  
  
I’m _Agathe’s_ worm, to be clear.   
I’ll remind you what she says about me.   
  
She says I’m a _quiet belief, hiding in her gut._ A belief that she is _unpleasant_ – unpleasant to _look at_ and to _know_.  
She says I’m _old_.  
She says I’m _hidden_.  
She says I _fidget_ whenever anyone really _looks_ at her.  
She says I _nudge her to shrink away_ whenever anyone looks too closely, whenever anyone can _see_ her.  
  
She says I am basic _fear_ – fear that won’t _FUCKING_ go away – even when she’s naked under Julian stroking his eager dick in her hand, feeling him _groan_ like Dukat.  
  
She says I have a ring, like on a ringworm – a decorative ring – really, Agathe? _Decorative?_ She says I have a ring that is her _SHAME –_ the shame triggered by her _WEIRD NAME._  
  
She says I make her feel like she’ll be discovered, exposed as an imposter. Exposed as a _FUNDAMENTALLY UNDESIRABLE_ person posing as someone _NORMAL_.  
  
See, she hears me and she feels me. That’s what she calls the fidgeting and the nudging. It’s when I speak to her. It’s when I tremble and cower, and it’s also when I cry. I’ve been crying since before I can remember existing. Agathe has felt me crying for so long that she doesn’t think she could feel any other way deep inside herself. She tries not to know. She told you all about how she tries not to know.  
  
She’s right about almost everything she says about me.   
  
I’m _hidden_ because she hides me.  
  
I am her belief that she is unpleasant to look at and to know – because that is _MY_ belief, that is what I _know_ of myself, that is what I’ve _experienced._  
  
I have fear – she told you _she_ has fear. She says it’s her worm, that I am her fear.  
_But I am not fear._  
I am not _HER_ fear. She feels _MY_ fear. I myself am afraid.   
_I’m afraid, I’m afraid._  
  
But she won’t _see_ me – she won’t _look at me_ – if she would _LOOK AT ME_ she would see that I am afraid just like she is – I am NOT HER FEAR. I’m just trembling. She feels me tremble. As with my crying, she thinks my trembling is the only way she knows how to feel deep inside, and she tries not to know.  
  
She says I nudge her to shrink away whenever anyone looks closely enough to see her.   
She means _me_ – to see _ME._ She doesn’t want anyone to look too deeply inside her and see _ME._ Not her. Not her. _ME._  
  
It isn’t true. I don’t nudge her to shrink away. She nudges herself. _SHE_ won’t even look into herself closely and deeply enough to see me. _SHE_ shrinks away from _ME_. I don’t nudge her to shrink away from me. I want her to hold me and like me and be okay with me and call me by her name. I wish she would try.  
  
See? She’s _almost_ right about the things she says about me. She would be _more_ right if she would just look at me and see – see and _know_ – who I am.  
  
She’s wrong about one thing for sure, one thing that she told you.  
  
She says I’m old. I’m not. I’m not old. She’s older than I am. I haven’t been with her for her whole life. I wasn’t with her for the first ten years. So I am not old.   
And _she_ is not old. She is young enough that Gul Dukat could be her father.  
  
She’s wrong to say that I’m old, and she’s wrong to say I’m a _worm_.  
  
I am not a worm.   
  
Gul Dukat saw that I am not a worm. _Gul Dukat saw me._ Then he touched me and held me and loved me, and gave me a name. _He gave me a name_ and he spoke it like no one else ever has, like no one else ever does.  
  
I’m his Agat.  
  
_He_ is why I speak to you now, why I introduce myself. Agathe wants me to fade away and die, but Gul Dukat makes me want to _live_.   
So I speak now. I testify. To you.   
I’m taking over Agathe’s journal for a time, to write my testimony – Agat’s testimony.  
  
Agathe didn’t cry for Dukat, when she wore her green dress and black heels and looked at herself in the mirror, feeling fucking sexy, her heart beating so fast because Julian was waiting for her at Quark’s.   
  
She told you she cried for Dukat.   
No, that was _ME._ I cry for Dukat. I cry for him _hard_.   
  
I won’t go away, Agathe. _I won’t go away!_ I cry for Dukat!  
  
She told you she would never forget _his sweet touch of father love, on his thighs._  
Again, _ME._ I am still collapsed on Gul Dukat’s thighs. His hand still strokes my hair. He still touches me with daddy love. I still feel it. Otherwise I would die.   
  
I won’t die! I won’t die. I want Dukat. I want his daddy touch again.  
  
She told you Dukat gave her to herself. Gave her “sexy little Agat”, “hot little Agat”. Unlocked her so she could go get herself _fucked_ by the doctor.  
  
Fine, fine. She was partially right. Dukat showed her more of what is inside her – namely, _ME_ – I am inside her – there has always been more _inside Agathe_ than she is willing to look at and see. She’s right, Dukat helped her see some of me. SOME of me. He helped her not to be afraid of… _some_ …of me. He helped her begin to see, hold, like, love, be okay with, even _name_ some of me. This was good, it is good.  
  
But _sexy little Agat_ is not exactly who I am.   
  
I’m simply little Agat. I’m _Dukat’s_ little Agat, because Dukat is the only person who has found me and looked at me and touched me and loved me and named me. I’m his. THAT’s why Agathe told him she belongs to him, that she is his, that she wants him to take her and fill her, that he is her everything, her treasure, her god.  
  
Because her worm is little Agat, and little Agat is Dukat’s, and little Agat is part of Agathe.  
  



	2. Exist

  
I understand Agathe when she cries. I’m inside her and I’m part of her. She may not know how I feel – because she doesn’t want to feel _ME_ – but I know exactly how _SHE_ feels. When she cries, we cry together.  
  
She told you how Major Kira intimidates her without meaning to. She told you she struggles to maintain self-confidence in Kira’s presence – in the presence of a strong woman with such a fiery temper, with fierce angry eyes when mad. Agathe constantly worries that Kira is mad at her, annoyed with her for speaking, for saying the wrong thing, for _being wrong._  
  
The fear is a problem when Agathe needs to communicate verbally with Kira. It’s similar to the way she felt under Julian that first night, before she let him kiss her fearful heart. The fear makes her cry.  
  
Agathe knows that this fear, this specific _worry_ – about Kira – lives in her subconscious mind, not her gut – meaning she doesn’t blame _me_ , her ‘worm’. She’s correct not to blame me. The root of this problem predates me. Hera began to get mad at Agathe and yell at her and slap her face – for speaking and for being wrong – before I came into existence.  
  
It frustrates Agathe that she’s so sensitive to Kira – to her eyes, her tone of voice, the way she carries her body and walks. Agathe wants to stop being afraid of her. But most of her days in Ops serve as reminder after reminder, that she doesn’t know how to get free from how she feels. This makes her cry, too. The frustration makes her cry.  
  
She went to the replimat on one of these days, in the early afternoon, seeking refuge in a hot steaming mug of chai latte. She drinks one nearly every day. It’s not what you might think – just as Gul Dukat is not Apollo, Julian doesn’t smell like these spices in his _most special place_ , where humans have hair. Agathe _loves_ his fragrance, of course! But it is not these spices. It’s just Julian. His scent is _julian_. She loves it, she loves him. But she loves chai, too. It’s yummy and comforting. Actually…that describes him perfectly…  
  
But I digress. Why wouldn’t I? I’m part of Agathe, it’s what she does.  
  
She sat at a table by herself in the replimat, warming her hands on the hot mug, trying not to cry too visibly in public. Dax found her this way, and joined her with confidently unobtrusive grace.  
  
“Agathe…something about your hands doesn’t look quite right…I wonder what it could be…?” Dax furrowed her brow, pretending to analyze the incongruity on the table. “Oh, _of course_ ,” she laughed, “I rarely see both of your hands anymore, without _Julian_ holding one of them!”  
  
She was right, Agathe and Julian hold hands _all the time_. They just want to be touching each other whenever possible. Well…technically, I can only speak for Agathe. I know _she_ wants to feel his touch all the time. I have to think he does too. He’s usually the one to kiss her and gather her hands into his, as soon as they’re near enough to one another. Agathe feels lucky that Julian is this way, and marvels at her good fortune. She’s aware of her bottomless need to be touched – to be touched warmly and lovingly.  
  
She managed a faint smile at Dax’s friendly wisecrack.   
  
Dax let out a little sigh of relief. “Oh _good_ , I’m glad to see you smile. As soon as I spoke just now, it occurred to me that Julian might be the _reason_ you’re crying. I really hope he isn’t!”  
  
“No, no. He isn’t. He’s _wonderful_.” Agathe gushed, wet-eyed. So in love.  
  
Dax focused her eyes on Agathe – her eyes which can somehow express active _concern_ together with the serene repose of seemingly ageless wisdom. Looking into these eyes, Agathe would willingly answer any personal question Dax might ever ask her. Dax’s eyes look like a fount of answers and meaning.  
  
Her question was simple. “Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
Agathe considered. Yes. Yes, she did want to kind of talk about it. She felt like she maybe could.  
  
“It’s Major Kira. She scares the shit out of me. But she doesn’t have to _do_ anything to scare me – she just _scares_ me. I guess I’m always afraid she’s mad. I mean mad at _me_. If not mad – then – _about_ to be mad at any moment. I can barely speak to her. I’m afraid to say anything. But I’m also afraid to say _nothing_. Basically I’m just… _afraid_. Afraid that I’m fundamentally _wrong_ and she’s mad.”  
  
Agathe worries that her _‘being afraid’_ isn’t very Starfleet. If she hadn’t been speaking to Dax, she would have also worried about sounding like she was whining. _There’s no whining in Starfleet,_ for fuck’s sake.  
  
“Are you really afraid of _Kira?_ ” Dax asked. “Or does she remind you of someone else?”  
  
I could hear Agathe sorting through a pile of possible responses to this question – searching for one with the fewest words. The story of how your _mother_ fucked you up is a monologue for the therapist’s couch, not the replimat table. Agathe wanted to talk about it without actually _talking_ about it, even to Dax. Black holes are fun for exactly no one.  
  
“My mother.” She dropped the word onto the table in front of Dax. _Mother._ One word holding a torturously private universe of hellish meaning. One word, one _weight_ that no one else can carry. Just as with Julian’s beauty, our _mother_ – that which our mother _is_ – is unholdable, uncontainable with words.   
  
“I’ll try to put it in a nutshell, Dax.” Agathe laughed.   
She laughs when she’s trying not to be a downer with her truth.   
“Whenever I need to speak with Kira, I feel like a seven-year-old girl cowering in a corner, holding her hands over her head, knowing her hair is going to be pulled, and her face slapped – while a monster looms over her screaming – a monster who looks like her mother, but with distorted features. That’s what I am with Kira. I am the seven-year-old girl. It’s not Kira’s fault.”  
  
Agathe tried to deliver these words drily and matter-of-factly. She feels that statements like these are, by their nature, over-dramatic. She fears that she won’t be believed, when she shares these details with frank accuracy. So she tries not to add anything… _extra_ …with her voice or with her face. She tries to merely impart information. She feels very self-conscious about it. She wants to be heard – but when heard, she wants to shrink away.  
  
Dax narrowed her eyes the way she does when thinking about an anomaly. This look is usually followed by an idea, an insight. Or a followup question.   
  
“What can you tell me about the corner that the girl cowers in?”  
  
That was a new one. No one had ever asked Agathe to describe the place where she cowered. An interesting question.  
  
“You know…it’s not a corner actually. It’s a _wall_. My mother always chased me until I was trapped with my back to a wall. I can feel the wall right now. It's my bedroom wall. I’m huddled on my bed cowering against the wall.”  
  
“What does the wall feel like?” Dax asked.  
“Cold. Hard.”  
  
“Do you hear anything?”  
“I hear a hollow sound when my head bumps the wall.”   
  
Agathe anticipated that Dax might ask her what else she could see and feel and hear. She caught a glimpse of Hera in her mind’s eye.  
  
“Dax, I don’t want to be here right now. I – I can’t. I don’t want to be here.”   
  
“You don’t want to be where the seven-year-old girl is?”  
  
_“No.”_ Agathe whispered.  
  
“If you leave, will the girl still be there? On the bed? With her back to the wall?”  
  
I’m sure Agathe’s eyes looked haunted. They felt that way to me.  
  
Still whispering. _“She is. She’s there. That’s where she is.”_  
  
I felt what Agathe was feeling. Horror. Like we left someone behind. We left the little girl behind. Just left her. We walked away over miles of years and left her. Miles of years…but we never really got anywhere. We left her but went nowhere. We were far from her but still with her – but _not_ with her. She wasn’t aware of our presence. She just cowered while the monster loomed over her. Even as we observed her – observed her from _within_ her – we had left her, we weren’t with her.  
  
“Agathe, I’m going to tell you what Commander Sisko told me about what happened when he met the wormhole aliens. I think he would be okay with it.”  
  
Agathe and I instantly relaxed in relief, as Dax seemed to deftly change the subject to something both non-threatening and intriguing.   
  
“The aliens considered his presence in the wormhole to be a threat to their existence. He tried to express his intentions – our intentions, Starfleet’s intentions. He wanted them to know we were _explorers_ , looking to expand our knowledge – not trying to conquer them, but seeking to co-exist peacefully.”  
  
“He found it difficult to be understood, because certain very basic concepts got lost in translation. Actually I just said one of them. _Lost._ The wormhole aliens didn’t understand the word ‘lost’.”  
  
I could see Dax searching for a way to explain herself with fewer words, just as Agathe had. She evidently wanted to get to her point, but needed to provide enough context first.  
  
“The aliens examined Sisko’s _nature_ by reenacting many of the individual memories and experiences that, taken together, make up his existence. They asked him questions about some of them. But they couldn’t make sense of his answers because he spoke in _linear_ terms – referencing the passage of time, each day affecting the next, and so on. The aliens don’t think this way. They consider one’s existence to be a _whole_. Everything exists all at once, non-linearly. Things don’t happen _before_ and _after_ – nothing belongs to the _past_ or to the _present_.”  
  
“That’s why they didn’t understand the word ‘lost’. How could Sisko tell them something was both _part_ of his existence and _not_ part of it – _lost_ – they thought he was trying to deceive them.  
  
“Sisko had introduced the word ‘lost’ because the aliens kept reexamining the memory of when his wife Jennifer died – he’d ‘lost’ his wife. It was a devastating memory. It happened when he was first officer on the Saratoga, when it was destroyed in battle against the Borg. In the very last few minutes, Sisko went to his quarters to get Jennifer and Jake, to evacuate. His quarters were in ruins – in flames – there’d been an explosion and a hole had been ripped through the floor. He found Jennifer partially buried under the rubble. He tried to pull her out but couldn’t do it. He burned his hands trying to get her out. He wasn’t in his right mind. She was already dead, but he didn’t want to leave her. His tactical officer had to pull him away to get him off the ship.”  
  
“What about Jake?” Agathe asked.  
  
“Jake was under the rubble too, but Sisko was able to pull him out and hand him over to the officer.”  
  
Dax continued. “When the aliens examined his memories, it felt to him as if he was actually there – _actually present_ – in those events. He could see them, he could hear them – he was _reliving_ them. Reliving them and trying to answer questions. He was very troubled because it seemed that the aliens kept making him relive Jennifer’s death. Well, not her death exactly, but…the moment _after_ her death. The moment when Sisko was forced to accept it. When he had to acknowledge that she was gone and stop trying to free her from the rubble. When he had to _leave_ her.”   
  
“He wasn’t able to do it, remember. If his tactical officer hadn’t pulled him away, he would have stayed with her and died.”  
  
“As I said, it seemed that the aliens kept making him go back to his flaming quarters, to Jennifer’s body. But when he asked them to stop taking him there, they told him _he_ was the one taking _them_ to that memory. They were confused because he described his existence in linear terms – but kept showing them that one moment, that one place. In their view, _that one event_ was his entire existence. He existed in those burning quarters with Jennifer’s body.”   
  
“They asked him why he insisted he was linear, when it was so obvious that he existed _there_ , in just that one place and time. They said, _‘you exist here_.’”  
  
“And he finally saw it their way. He _did_ exist there. He told them he saw Jennifer’s body every time he closed his eyes. He said he had never figured out how to live without her. _He had never left the ship._ ”  
  
I caught an image flashing in Agathe’s mind. Julian. _Julian’s body – trapped under rubble – leaving him there – oh God that HURT!_ Our heart went out to Commander Sisko. _What pain._ We didn’t think we could imagine it, even though we just had.  
  
I won’t recount the rest of Dax and Agathe’s discussion about the idea of one’s entire existence being bounded by a singular event in time. Of course Agathe saw the parallel that Dax drew for her, as I’m sure you do too. Maybe she had never left her bedroom and still existed on her bed, cowering against the wall. It was an interesting idea, but the analogy fell a little short. Agathe hadn’t cowered just _once_. She could relive similar events at other ages – she had also been eight years old, nine, ten. There had been other walls. It wasn’t just one moment in time. But maybe…maybe Agathe was _stuck_ in the sense that these little girls didn’t know they could _leave_ now. The mother monster wasn’t trapping them anymore. The little girls could walk away and be free. That was something to consider. Agathe would consider it.  
  
But remember – I told you this is MY testimony. Little Agat. Me.  
  
I am not the seven-year-old girl. I told you I didn’t exist until Agathe was ten.  
  
I listened to Dax’s story, too. I heard what she said about Sisko, about his flaming quarters, about Jennifer’s body. About his one event that he hadn’t left, that had become his existence.   
  
I heard Dax loud and clear. I saw something as well. I saw an event.  
  
Agathe can’t see this one. She told you about the black steel wall in her mind. She’s flattened against this wall and can’t see what’s on the other side of it. When she tries to move the wall she feels anger and terror. Her heart races. So she doesn’t try to move it. She tried only once, for that dining table exercise in her writing class. After that she left it alone and tried to run miles of years away from it.  
  
I’m on the other side of that wall. And a particular event is on the other side of that wall. A time and a place. A chair. Benches. Tables. People.   
  
Little Agat sits in the chair. I saw and felt this, as Dax told Sisko’s story. I learned that _my_ existence is in this chair, in this room, with these people. I exist here.  
  
And if I exist here, in this event, then so does Agathe. She exists in this event that she can’t see or feel or hear. The event on the other side of her black steel wall.   
  
I want to tell you about this event. I just need to figure out how. It’s not enough to tell you the _what_ of it, the _what-happened_. I need you to _BE_ there with me, just as the wormhole aliens were there with Sisko, there _with_ him in his flaming quarters with Jennifer’s body. I need you to see and hear and feel it – _WITH_ me.  
  
Agathe tries to run from this event, run from _me_. She tries to exist linearly. She tries to affect tomorrow with today. Sometimes she makes progress. But even as she gets a little further away from me, she also gets nowhere. Because I am here, and she is here. We exist here, together.  
  
And what of our heart? How do we feel?  
  
Linear Agathe loves Julian.  
  
Agathe with me, on my side of our wall – Agathe with Agat – we need Dukat.  
  
_We need Dukat._  
  



	3. Hurt

  
Julian is heaven.  
  
_Julian is heaven._  
_Julian is heaven._  
  
If I fade away under Julian, in his warm embrace – fade out of existence – I’ll be in heaven already. I’ll be okay. I won’t tremble and cry anymore. Agathe won’t feel me – she’ll be okay. That’s what she wants. She wants Julian’s heaven to kill me gently, quietly, peacefully. Nobody has to know. She won’t have to know. Julian will never know. That’s what she wants. She wants Julian’s shielding heaven to free her from her worm, snuff it out, love it out of existence, out of remembrance. She doesn’t know who I am or she wouldn’t want to let this happen to me.  
  
Julian is heaven and he hurts me. How can I say this? He hurts me with his naked love, because he doesn’t know I feel it too – I feel _him_ , I feel all of him, in Agathe. I feel his body heat, his hot skin. I feel him in my arms, on my breasts, against my belly, between my thighs. I feel Agathe’s name on my neck as he breathes it against my skin with his kisses, as he rocks and strokes me with his love, with his hard goodness – so hard for Agathe, so full and hard with his love and truth – but not for me, not for me.  
  
I often reach for his face and search his open eyes – I search him through Agathe’s eyes – I search and find that he _would_ love me if he could only see me, if Agathe would show me to him. I trust the love and truth in his eyes. I want to be wrapped in it together with her. I want to be known by it, named by it – _I want to be Agathe and be named and loved by Julian_. I feel him, I feel him. When he holds her, he holds me. When he kisses her, he kisses me. When he touches her, _ohhhhhhhh_  
  
Agathe doesn’t bring Julian to her quarters to spend the night. She only goes to his. She keeps a toothbrush and toiletries there, and some clothes. She showers there. When they’re joined in bed she wants to feel fresh and clean in all the places where he loves her with his lips and tongue.   
  
She is afraid to have Julian in her own bed, to hold him and sleep with him there. She associates her bed with a jagged, menacing craving that she knows he can’t possibly satisfy. She doesn’t want to _ever_ place him in the position of not being able to satisfy her.  
  
She can’t forget begging on her bed – desperately begging to be _fucked, fucked hard, FUCKED NOW_ – then looking back at Dukat as he held her hips and positioned his treasure where she throbbed for him – looking back and begging him to _wait, wait – please HIT her first._  
  
Hit her.   
  
_Hit._  
It sounds weird, doesn’t it? The word? Hit…  
  
She served herself to him, a wet and naked offering, gifting her most special place to him, her soft well of love where she ached for him to ravage her. She openly displayed herself to him on her knees, submitting herself for him to see and take at his pleasure, at his will, for his purpose.  
  
While exposed this way, she asked him to slap her, please slap her hard.   
  
But when he slapped her, she realized what she _really_ wanted – she begged him to _hit_ her, hit her hard, _harder, harder –_ “fucking HIT ME, _please_ ” – she begged for it, she moaned and cried for it.   
  
And he did hit her. He changed from slapping to hitting. There was a difference. A difference in how he angled his hand. He hit her with the heel of his hand instead of his palm. She felt the dark thudding pain in her bones, the deep and solid reverberations. He hit her HARD, _too_ fucking hard, with the unforgiving hardness of his hand, until she was crying enough, undone enough, screaming and shaking enough. Just as she wanted, just as she begged him to do to her. It hurt her so much. She _wanted_ it to hurt like that. He hurt her _perfectly_. When he’d hurt her enough he took her with ending force, he shoved himself into her brutally, the way she wanted it, and pounded her just as she begged, he braced himself and held her hips and pounded her and _owned_ her, on her bed – _“no mercy, no mercy,”_ she told you – _“he killed me, he killed me – so good so hard,”_ she told you.  
  
_THE PAIN, SHE WANTS IT_  
  
It’s not the same as wanting to be fucked hard. She told you, _“when I feel safe I want to be fucked hard.”_ Julian can do that. He can fuck her good and hard, and he does, when he knows she wants it.  
  
No, this isn’t the same. She wants the _PAIN_ , she wants the pain – she wants the _PUNISHMENT_ , the grinding down, the leveling – she wants it from Dukat – _Dukat, Dukat, Dukat._ She _KNOWS_ she still wants it after all this time has gone by – she can’t _NOT_ know it. She remembers it, she feels it, she craves it. She can’t bring Julian to her bed. She can’t let these two realities touch. She can’t break what she has with Julian. She would want to die if she broke it.  
  
But the pain is only _part_ of what she wants, the first part.  
  
The other is his warmth and comfort _after_ he hurts her. Dukat. How he holds her, kisses her, presses her, warms her, soothes her, fills her.   
  
After he broke her in Ops he immediately stopped crushing her face and twisting her neck. He held her head with his hand and smoothed her hair, in the way that feels like love. He pressed his face to hers – where he had nuzzled and licked her to end her – and he cooed softly and rocked her as she shook against him. That was the first time she experienced pain and comfort – punishment and love – from his hands, from his body, from his face.   
  
His first kiss on her – anywhere on her – was where his armor had hurt her, where it had marred her skin and bruised her. He’d ground himself against her so hard on the balcony that night – _he’d hurt her_ – she’d sucked on his neck ridge to _endure_ as well as enhance the pain – and then later he _kissed_ her where he had hurt her, he caressed her marks with his thumbs, and he licked and sucked her breasts. He loved her with tongue and mouth, loved her where she feels most vulnerable, most small and cowering. He _HURT_ her and then he loved and fucked her.   
  
In her quarters on her own bed, after he struck and pounded her, he cleaned her off with warmth and care – he rubbed her back. Then he lay his body over hers and kissed her neck, securing her safely underneath him while she slept, waking her only to once again envelop her in a world of being filled with his lovingly invasive treasure, of being overtaken with his _everything_.  
  
This unholy concentration of fear and arousal, pain and comfort – this _mind-fucking_ elixir of punishment and love – it’s too intense, too potent – she feels like the emptiness of its absence will expand and overtake her being – it will dematerialize her from the inside out, from her center to her very last edges – like what happened to Justin, like what she saw when he vanished.   
  
She feels – powerlessly – that she can’t live without it. His punishment and love is _required_ now, required by her body and her heart, just as food and water and touch. It hurts her to be deprived of it. The passage of time may dull the sharp edges of her craving pangs, but her soul continues to itch and agonize. The physical and emotional memories burn in her, they consume her without reprieve, they expand a destroying hole in her core, like the slowly devastating afterburn of some kind of disruptor blast to her heart.  
  
Her quarters remind her of it. So she flees her quarters. Sometimes she thinks she should request to have them reassigned, but she lets the thought get carried away by daily distractions. She loses the thought, she forgets the thought.  
  
If she doesn’t hold the thought, then she won’t need to know or confess that deep inside her she still wants Dukat to know where to find her, where to punish her, where to love her. And deeper yet, she feels _me_ inside her. I fucking _trouble_ her – I’m going _crazy_ – little Agat wants, pulls, _strains_ to crawl up his daddy thighs and melt into his embrace again.   
  
Agathe flees to Julian, who _can’t_ hurt and punish her, who can’t make her _want_ pain from him, who can’t torment me with daddy thighs. He can only love her in an unmuddied way, and she can only want love and clarity and truth from him. He is an altogether different world. He is heaven. He wants her and invites her and she runs to his heaven and dives in as deep as possible – she wants to sink and _drown_ in him, in his fucking purity. If she can drown, if she can die, maybe she can be free. It’s what she wants to do with _me_. She wants to kill me in Julian. She wants parts of herself to _end_.  
  



	4. Want

  
Julian – _feeling desired, WANTED by Julian_ – this tonic is also required by Agathe’s body and her heart. Each time he gathers her to himself to hold her and kiss her and _enter_ her and savor being inside her, she swallows it as empirical evidence of his desire for her. She absorbs it as his sworn assertion that he _WANTS_ her. Each affirmation of his _wanting_ helps her believe that her worm will fade away by degrees and her fear of fundamental undesirability will silently come to a gradual but certain end.  
  
They never go to sleep without fucking first. They can’t not be naked together. They _eat each other alive_ when they can get solidly alone, when they can tackle each other to the ground – the dark heady ground of hours of night to come, hours of dark skin-touching sex-fragranced interwoven togetherness in bed.  
  
She watches and memorizes the desire in his face when she’s on top of him, riding him in the rhythm she’s learned that he loves – she’s learned his angel rhythm for him, the stroking that holds him close to coming but not there, not there, so beautifully not quite there – she watches him toss and float on the waves that she raises for him. She could cry for his beauty as he floats and gives himself up and shows himself to her – she _LIVES_ to see his cashmere eyes this way, just for her, _just for her_ – he only looks at _her_ this way, she’s the only one privileged to see _THIS_ cashmere, _THESE_ eyes – these eyes that _WANT_ her and _keep wanting her_ , keep wanting her _again and again and again._  
  
His eyes may close at times, but then she sees his curved lips fall softly open as he gasps and breathes in ecstasy – she claims his mouth, his beautiful mouth, she sucks his bottom lip, she wants to suck him in so hard. They hold each other and kiss with devouring fervor as she rides him and he thrusts upward to meet her and fuck her harder, faster, rougher – he’s learned how she likes it too. She loves to melt down into his heat and bury herself in his dark smooth neck and kiss and lick him, suck his angel groans from his shadowed throat and feel her breasts pressing into him near his heart. He tells her how good her breasts feel on his skin – she feels so exciting and beautiful and _WANTED_ when he tells her that – she keeps swallowing his assertions into herself so deep, so hard – surging with him into the hot fast stroking rhythm that hungrily destroys him, destroys him, destroys him – loving him, loving him, loving him – _oh Julian Julian Julian_  
  
And she’s learned his secret moans, his most special gasps, when she loves and treasures his hard goodness, when she holds her lips to him and slides her kisses onto him everywhere, everywhere – hungry sliding kisses – she explores his secret texture with her tongue – his texture, his uniqueness, his _julianness – ohhhhhhh_ she loves licking him, licking him, _LICKING him_ until she can’t take it anymore and has to suck him up and down so good – he’s so good, so warm, so hard, so yummy… It’s music to her ears as she listens to her Julian breathe and sigh and _WANT_ as he does for no one else, _no one else_ – only for her, only for Agathe. He sighs and _wants_ as he moves his hips to meet her mouth, to plunge himself into her hot wet gripping sucking loving, as in a trance… _oh baby…BAAAABY…the way you move your lips on me…oh Goddddddd…Agathe baby…your LIPS…ahhhhhhhhh…I love your lips…_  
  
If she wakes during the night – wakes before he does – she loves to overcome him so he’ll take her with hot sleepy _wanting_. She’s learned how her firm nipples arouse him, how he unfailingly surrenders to the unambiguous touch of her modest breasts that swell for him, swell for her _Julian_. If his back is to her, she aggressively spoons him as he sleeps. She primes him by molding her warm body to his naked sleeping form. She grinds herself against his ass and presses her love-hardened breasts into his back, caressing his chest and belly with her pulling hand, relentlessly kissing his skin with soft open lips, massaging him with hands and nipples and love-swollen kisses.  
  
She writhes and rubs and presses and kisses until he growls into awareness and rolls his body toward her and assumes control, takes it from her – he pulls her all the way into his arms and pins her under himself in his biologically activated embrace – trapping and killing – one purpose drives him now, only one – to be _over_ her, _on_ her, _in_ her. She wants him to _kill her, kill her, kill her._ He presses himself onto her body with finality, he growls into her neck and slides himself into her, so hard he almost already enters her while still rolling her over and parting her thighs predatorily with his own. He moves inside her like he hasn’t had her in years – he must _trap her, kill her, eat her._  
  
He’s not all the way awake – he’s unboundedly passionate in his sleep, his thrusting is deep and full and uninhibited – its _wanting violenc_ e rips hot ragged cries from Agathe’s throat. The skirmish is over fairly quickly because she’s gotten him so turbulently aroused with her brazen advance, with her open assault. She ends him with her cries. He’s so unaware – he comes inside her instead of pulling out as he does when he’s more alert. He rolls onto his back again as she clings to him, settling on top of him, absorbing his quickened heartbeats while his goodness restores itself to soft quietness within her depths.   
  
I watch with her, I watch as her mind’s eye follows the unhurried spreading flow of his warm cum inside her – his creamy love that bathes and caresses them both and seals them together, sweetly stinging her nerves with its peaceful tickle – as they lie together joined, drifting into sleep again.  
  



	5. Come

  
Julian has his own fun with Agathe. He’s been teaching her to slow down. He _Ops Floors_ her – yeah, I’m reporting correctly, that’s what I hear her whisper to herself. He doesn’t know he’s doing almost exactly what Dukat did. Agathe knows, but she won’t tell him. He does it so good – he does _her_ so good. Both men know what to do with their hands and fingers, they must have learned from… _experience_ …much more than Agathe has.  
  
Julian doesn’t hurt her like Dukat did. He doesn’t hurt her at all. But no! I’m wrong. He _does_ hurt her a little, just a little. He starts to bite and suck her body when he knows she’s close – he bites and sucks his way up to her throat and over her neck, he leaves little marks – she enjoys being marked by her lover. Dax sees the top ones and teases Agathe about them, and she likes being teased. His biting and sucking hurts her but we need a different word for it – it’s _heaven_ -hurt, it’s _coming_ -hurt, it’s _julian-_ hurt. He bites and sucks her jaw – _exactly where Dukat licked her_ – he doesn’t know it, he doesn’t know it – but he sucks her where Dukat’s tongue was, so wet and hot and ending.  
  
He gets Agathe when she’s lying on her side with her back to him – this is _his_ assault, _his_ answer to her ambush when he sleeps. He worships her ass – he starts by warmly enjoying her firm curves with the palm of his hand – he caresses her, he _teases_ her – he knows where she wants his skilled doctor’s hand to own her so much _more, more, more_ – she wants him to hold her and grip her and invade her and _take possession_ of her. He _KNOWS_ this – but he rubs her ass for as long as he pleases, kissing her arm and shoulder to distract her – and then finally he starts to touch her where he knows she wants it.  
  
At the first touch of his fingers she starts moaning and writhing but he _shushes_ her like Dukat did – _shhhhhh, shhhhhh Agathe, just feel it baby, stay with it, enjoy it_  
  
She doesn’t touch herself like he does – she’s too squeamish about her own body, about the exact configuration of her special place where _Julian_ knows the details, where _Julian_ knows the pleasure points, the smooth surfaces of insanity, the sensitive bumps and folds, the sweet nub where her nerves anxiously protest before flowering into thick hot throbbing bliss. He knows how to slide and rub and probe and pinch, he knows how to overtake her body’s entire awareness, he knows how to get her so wet she doesn’t know where his long fingers end and her dripping smoothness begins.  
  
It feels like Julian's fingers _belong_ to her body, that his hands were specially designed by a heavenful of pussy angels with the express purpose of strategically infiltrating and killing her in pulsing waves that make her hunger to be filled with _COCK_ – nothing but _cock_ – _she can’t be filled with cock soon enough, deep enough –_ Julian _kills her,_ he kills her but won’t let her _DIE_ – but that’s okay she doesn’t _NEED_ to die – she can be eternally killed by his hand, by his fingers – trusting eternity to provide his _hard fucking goodness_ when she’s ready – not a moment sooner – only when she’s ready, when she’s ready – _how does he know how to DO this to her_  
  
Agathe doesn’t know how to do it for herself, or she certainly would. But she’s always been nervous about it. That’s why she humps and grinds on things. She’s done it her whole life. She knows how to come fast, come hard, _come good._ Dukat is so perfect for that. He’s _big_ , and when he’s hard…well, she came so good on him when she humped him. It’s what she knows.  
  
But Julian wants to teach her to _slow down_ , to savor the ride, restrain it, control the gathering of the waves – resist the looming tsunami in order to increase the devastation when she finally surrenders herself to its overpowering strength and force. He wants her to learn to wait – waiting will make her come so _insanely good,_ so _lose-her-mind intensely_. He kisses her and whispers and shushes her when she wants to groan and whimper and cry out – _shhhhhh baby, relax, relax, let yourself feel it, feel it, wait for it_  
  
He likes to watch her. He wants to _SEE_ , just like Dukat did. He wants what Dukat wanted, and she is so eager to give it all to him – she _FLOODS_ her eyes over him, she _SHOWS_ him what he’s doing to her, she shows him her sweet struggle. His warm open eyes shine with delight, it’s fun for him, he _LOVES_ killing her this way, he loves to be both cause and effect and watch it _ALL_ – and she loves to be watched by him, _SEEN_ by him like this. He opens her like no one else does – he opens her eyes, her voice, her body, her desire, her depths, her heart-beating well of love, her _being_. She feels she is bonded to him and floating away at the same time – she’s outside of herself yet remains inside herself too – she stays with Julian so she can show herself to him, so he can see – so she can love him by letting him _SEE_ her.  
  
He lets her close her eyes as well. He lets her sink and float and watch her pleasure unfold and undulate like rippling banners of complexly colored cashmere inside the darkness under her lids. She breathes and moans wordless utterances – he loves to hear her, he kisses her arm and shoulder in time with her sighing vocalizations – until she rolls onto her back to open herself to him completely – then he licks and kisses her swollen breasts – softly, softly, no teeth yet – while he _plays_ her with his fingers, while he strums her expertly to make her sing for him, sing with her gasping moans, sing with his beautiful soft _’J’_ name that she sighs to him in her breathless dizziness. She feels his dark scratchiness if he hasn’t shaved since the morning – his scratchiness on her arm, on her breasts – his scratchy darkness kills her just the same as his surgeon’s fingers in her creamy folds.  
  
_He knows,_ he knows when she’s going to lose it very soon, when she’s going to need his cock or she’ll die, when she can’t learn any more self-restraint for one day, can’t slow herself down any longer, can’t resist _coming_ for him – she’s holding, holding, holding, slipping – _that’s_ when he starts biting and sucking his way up to her throat and over her neck, he torments her with little tastes of the savagery she craves between her legs, she wants to be bitten and torn to shreds and _killed_ – the bites, the bites, the sucking, the little aching stings – she knows his final destination, he’s going to her jaw – it’s their little game – it’s the predetermined end of her torture – he bites and sucks her jaw as she screams and shakes and _hugs_ him all the way onto her body, between her legs – _where are her legs anymore, so spread, so opened for her Julian_ – her hands are near his hips – she uses one hand to grab his steel goodness and position it so he can shove it in and fucking _END_ her – then both of her hands take his ass and _PULL_ him into her as if he needs any help drilling her fucking _DEEP_ and _HARD_ – he doesn’t need assistance but she is delirious in her orgasm and tries to help slam his iron fullness into herself _harder, harder, deeper_ – she’s out of her mind with his cock inside her finally – he _FILLS_ her with his cock – _out of her mind, out of her mind, out of her mind –_ and he fucks her and fucks her and fucks her _and this is what Ops Floor means now –_ the doctor brings it to completion and _it is GOOD._  
  



	6. Deny

  
We dreamed something last night. I was there with Agathe. I’m part of her – I feel what she feels. If I’m able to help her then I do. If I can’t, that means I need the same help she needs.   
  
_Julian, beautiful Julian._  
  
But before the dream…before sleeping…   
  
Agathe lay on her stomach on his bed. He sat straddling her – rubbing her neck, her shoulders, her arms, her back. Massaging her. So good. His hands. _Ohhhhhhh_ it was warm and relaxing.   
  
He gives such good shoulder rubs, back rubs. He’s so good to her muscles. So deep, so good, so competent. And she feels him straddling her and knows he’s going to fuck her soon. Her eyes are closed and she moans softly along with the deep rolling pleasure he massages into her body. In her mind she follows his progress down her back, closer and closer to her ass, to her special place. She knows he’s going to scoot down so he can rub her and squeeze her near to where she wants him. He’ll kiss and nuzzle his face over the small of her back and then he’ll kiss her ass cheeks. He’ll bite them teasingly. She’ll hold her breath waiting for the skilled touch of his hand between her legs. He’ll rub her with it to assert his ownership and make her wet for him. She’ll want to be fucked so hard by the time he does that. She’ll be out of her mind when she feels his hand, _oh she’ll want him to take her, seize her and fucking TAKE her_ , _deep, DEEP_  
  
He did it last night. Last night she wasn’t all the way naked as she usually would be. She wanted him even worse than ever when she felt him pull her underwear down her legs, out of the way. It felt dirty to her, like he was crossing a line – a line he shouldn’t cross – like he was being _wrong,_ he was going to _DO_ her when he _SHOULDN’T_ , _ohhhhhh_ … Just this one intrusive detail stabbed her with powerful twisting pangs of arousal in her belly – lower than her belly. It made her feel like he was bad and he would _steal_ her, _corrupt_ her. She wanted him like that, somehow _wrong_. It excited her. She whimpered and her breathing became shallow. Maybe he sensed the difference too, because he did something he hadn’t done to her yet – he slapped her ass. It felt good to her, of course it did. She loves being slapped. She _LOVES_ it. She cried out and moaned and he slapped her again and again and _AGAIN_ , harder each time. He could slap her really hard. _Ohhhhhh God_ his slaps on her ass made her want him to fuck her so hard, so wrong – so good, so wrong.  
  
But her two realities suddenly touched. Her Julian and Dukat realities, which are _NEVER_ supposed to touch. Julian slapped her ass hard and she felt _Dukat_. Her eyes flew open. She panicked. _Oh God._ She heard the unspoken words in her mind – she had just opened her mouth to start begging him for _MORE_ , for harder, harder, harder, _hit her fucking HARD_. No no no no no. No no. She felt it, she wanted Julian to hit her and pound her, but no no no not Julian, not Julian. It would make him feel like _Dukat_ behind her. She would feel Dukat. _She would want Dukat._ She would _see_ him in her mind’s eye. He already darkened the corner of it with the memory of his ridged form. She would want him, crave him, imagine him, _feel his treasure_ – in her mind. _Dukat_ would be punishing her, if Julian hit her. _Dukat_ would be fucking her, if Julian pounded her. No, no, no, no, no.  
  
She wanted Julian to stop slapping her, but she didn’t want to tell him that. How would she explain it? And she _liked_ being slapped. She didn’t want him to think she didn’t like it! She just wanted this _particular_ moment to pass, she didn’t want to endure a repeat of what Dukat did to her so good. _Ohhhhh, Dukat._ The quickest thing that came to mind was to get Julian _FUCKING_ her already – stop the slapping – just get him to take her and shove his dick in her _right now_. She raised her ass so he could give it to her, so there was no mistaking what she wanted from him.  
  
_“Oh God Julian PLEASE, please fuck me, please FUCK ME…”_ She didn’t need to cry and beg very long before she felt him adjust her hips to the optimal angle and deliciously slide his goodness into her – _ahhhhhh yes yes God YES –_ he slid himself in and started stroking – lonnnng gliding strokes – deliberate, attentive strokes – accompanied by his own slowly drawn out groans as he savored her hot wet tightness all along his length, all up and down as he steadily advanced and retreated – not pounding, not pounding – _thank God not pounding_. And not hitting her – just holding her hips tightly, pulling her declaratively against his body as he pushed himself into her firmly and fully – not slamming, not hitting – just sliding, stroking, pushing, filling deeply – _ahhhhhhh thank God he loves to take it more patiently and savor everything, it’s what he does, he feels so good, he teaches her to TREASURE every moment with him, not just crash through it all the time…_  
  
All she needed _HIM_ to do was _NOT POUND HER_ – all _SHE_ needed to do was _NOT WANT IT_ , not imagine it. But that was so incredibly hard to do. It was the worst struggle, it was difficult, it was overwhelming. It was disorienting to moan for something she _DIDN’T_ want to feel – except she _DID_ want to feel it – she wanted it and _didn’t_ want it, so she cried and moaned her frustration into the mattress. It was horrible. The way Julian filled her and moved within her, like he was _made_ for her, like he’d always _belonged_ inside her – _oh God it was so good –_ but she also wanted him to let go and pound her so hard. She wanted it, she wanted it – but she knew she would remember _Dukat, Dukat, Dukat._  
  
Agathe was thankful that Julian couldn’t read the conflict in her face, the urgent concentration. She focused intently on staying with what _he_ was doing, _feeling_ him – _HIS_ choices, _HIS_ strokes, _HIS_ pace – observing him in her mind, studying his motions, his rhythm, his intensity. _JULIAN’S_ non-pounding fucking was good for her, the way he was doing her right now. She could follow along with him, cling to the moment, _feel_ it. _Oh, God._ She did that, desperately.   
  
She visualized his hard stroking goodness in her mind, thick and coated with her creamy love – she could see it, she could feel it. In her mind she watched his goodness confidently assert its right-of-way across her threshold, surging ahead until reaching and knocking emphatically at a second mystery door deep within her. She pictured his balls nudging her appreciatively each time he pressed himself all the way inside her where he belonged, where she made a _home_ for him, pressing into her with as much of his beautiful length as she could possibly receive. He continued thrusting at a deliberately unfrantic pace, taking the time to add a firm warm extra push at the end of each inward stroke, pulling her to himself with imperiously owning strength while he was fully enveloped in her.   
_ohhhhhh God those were good, they RIPPLED in her, those extra pushes when he was completely buried in her, so affirming_  
_ohhhhhh Julian, keep doing me like this – don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t hurry – DON’T POUND – just push, just fill me with yourself – DEEP – ohhhhhhh_  
  
She wished she could watch him for real, watch him close up – she wanted to see what he could see. She wanted to see it _ALL_ , it felt so good. And she wanted to see that he wasn’t Dukat. She wanted to see Julian, _her heavenly Julian_. She twisted her head around to look behind her and see him. _Ohhhhhh look at him, he’s so YUMMY._ She could see _HIM_ enjoying the view, his eyes openly drinking in what she wished _SHE_ could see, watching his dick slide over and over again into the wet swollen center of her soft pink love, watching himself being sucked, swallowed, _consumed_ in her love for him – her love so sweet, so creamy, so tight, so hot. She squeezed her muscles on him – oh he _LOVED_ it, she could see, she could feel, she could _hear_ how much he loved it. She felt so happy to know how good she made _HIM_ feel, her Julian.  
  
He adjusted his grip, tightening his hands on her hips and ass, mildly scowling as he concentrated on the pleasure he felt inside her – she observed his mouth partially opened, his upper lip curled, his teeth bared – she heard him breathing low-pitched melodious groans as he served himself to her with controlled, measured power, equally thrilling and killing her with the force of his restraint.  
  
He noticed her watching him and focused his sex-drunk eyes on hers – draping her in their erotic cashmere together with the healing flow of loving angel blessings from his lips.  
“ _oh my GOD baby_ … _you feel so good_ … _ohhh Goddddddd…ahhhhhhh yeah…FUCK baby you feel so GOOD…_ ”  
  
She wanted him to hear how she felt too – she could _cry it to him_ , she was so overcome. She whimpered and panted her feelings to him.  
_“I LOVE watching you fuck me, Julian…ohhhhhh Juuuuulian…I love it, I love it…oh GOD I love to see you fucking me…ahhhhhhh Godddddd…Julian…”_  
  
He answered softly, laughing joyfully, gently snarling at her.  
“ _ohhhhh baby…_ I love watching me fuck you too. But you want it _HARDER_ , don’t you? I know you like it hard and fast and _ROUGH_ …just say the word baby, I’ll do you so _FUCKING_ hard… _I’ll POUND_ you, _I’ll pound you so good…_ ”  
  
She couldn’t tell him the truth, the whole truth.  
_“_ No no no, it’s perfect like this _– ohhhhhh don’t stop – don’t stop – oh GOD Julian –_ don’t stop doing it like this – please – it’s so good – it's so good – _DON’T STOP – ”_  
  
It _WAS_ so good, so perfect – _it was –_ he had her almost breathless. But she was telling the truth while also _LYING_ to him. She _DID_ want him to pound her, she _DID_ want it hard and fast and rough. It _KILLED_ her that he knew exactly how she wanted it but she said _NO_ , she _DENIED_ it. Oh, she _did_ want it, she did – _SHE DID_ and _HE WOULD DO IT –_ if she would just tell him the truth _,_ the whole truth, nothing but the _TRUTH._  
  
But she couldn’t, it was too scary, she was SCARED. She was scared to feel Dukat, to _want Dukat_ if Julian fucked her like that. No, no, no. _NO._ It was tearing her apart, she couldn’t go on this way.  
  
She would have to end it, cut it short. She would need to make Julian come, _NOW_. She knew exactly how to end him. She didn’t want to do it – when did she _EVER_ want to make her Julian stop, make him finish? But she couldn’t take it anymore, being pulled in opposite directions, wanting and not wanting, feeling either Julian or Dukat, lying, lying to Julian – telling partial truth – denying what she so obviously wanted from him, rejecting the offer from his loving angel lips – _oh God what was happening, what was happening to her?_  
  
Agathe knows how to moan a certain way, and never does it recklessly – she’s always careful not to let it out too soon. She learned very early on that whenever Julian hears her moaning this way, it makes him come almost immediately – he can’t help it. It’s easy to do – it’s simply the full expression of how he makes her feel. It’s a ragged agonized crying moan, like he’s ripping her body in half and shredding her in flaming strips – but it’s _JOYFUL_ agony, pure joy – it’s _PAINED JOY_ , it’s _RIPPED_ and _SHATTERED BLISS_ – it‘s the exact sound of what Julian detonates in her when he’s making _HER_ come. The moment she gives voice to it, it fucking destroys him. He can’t hold himself in when he hears it – it’s nuclear for him.  
  
She turned away from looking at him now, trembling because once he was out of sight she felt Dukat rushing into her awareness. Julian felt so good and the memory of Dukat felt so good too. She weakened and gave herself in to both the reality and the longing for what was absent – she felt Julian and imagined Dukat – she saw them both somehow – she _FELT_ both men, they were _both_ killing her, shredding her, shattering her. She voiced her agony, she screamed her crying moans. She pictured her moans as shields surrounding her – she raised her shields against the assault of everything she didn’t want to crave, all the destructive energy waves.   
  
Of course her cries were the death blow for Julian, exactly as intended. She knew he would briefly pound her in the throes of his orgasm – he would plunge himself mindlessly into her, slam her uncontrollably deep and hard and fast – it couldn’t be helped – she would have to accept it, endure it – but she would _love_ it – she would _want_ it – she always does – she _LOVES_ how he feels in her when he loses control – _oh God Julian please die quickly, please be finished killing me, I can’t take this_  
  
His beautiful voice, distressed.  
_“Oh baby I’m sorry – I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come – I can’t stop it – !”_  
  
“No it’s okay – go ahead – I want to feel it, I want to feel your cum on me!“  
  
He released himself all over her back, as Dukat had done – it felt good, she loves to feel his warm cum landing on her skin like playful kitten paws. But he was considerate – he controlled his aim so it didn’t get in her hair.   
  
“Careful babe – it’s gonna run off your side – hold still, I’ll get a towel.”  
  
Full circle – rubbing her back again – at least she felt Julian doing it now, not Dukat, that was good. Agathe felt comfortable lying on her stomach and settled herself to try to sleep, knowing it would be difficult tonight. She felt very troubled.   
  
Julian ran warm caressing hands over her upper body for a few minutes – kissing her neck under her hair, kissing her shoulders and her back. Finally he lay on his side facing her, resting his hand on the small of her back as he began to get sleepy. She kept her face turned away from him, afraid of what he might be able to read in it.   
  
Agathe felt lost next to Julian, under his hand. To tell the truth – she felt _unfinished._ Not done. Not nearly done. Whether with goodness or with treasure, she needed pounding now. She felt empty without it. She would run from the emptiness if she only could. She also felt _guilty_ – entirely to blame for all of it. She didn’t want to cry because Julian might hear her, and she wouldn’t know what to tell him. She was able to let tears roll from her eyes without allowing her breathing to give her away. She felt alone and scared and sad.   
  
I felt everything she felt. Her tears were my tears. Julian’s hand rested on my back, just as on hers.   
  
We must have fallen asleep.   
  
Then we dreamed.  
  



	7. Yes

  
_How is Julian not waking up?_  
  
The whole bed shakes. Julian’s sleeping in it. He’s lying on his side. He’s facing the empty space where Agathe fell asleep under his hand. Her face is close to his. But she’s not lying next to him. Her feet are on the floor, next to the side where she fell asleep. She’s bent over the bed, her weight on her elbows. Her upper body lies across the space next to Julian, as if she’s leaning over to kiss his beautiful face.   
  
The whole bed shakes every time Dukat slaps her ass. He’s slapping her _hard_ , fucking hard and loud. _Oh he’s slapping her, he’s punishing her._ She’s grunting and whimpering and freaking out because it’s going to wake Julian! _How is he not waking up?_ He’s going to wake up if Dukat keeps slapping her like this – it’s too loud! It’s too hard! _Oh God no no no!_  
  
She hears his voice behind her, deep with authority. “You wanted this, Agat. You wanted the doctor to hurt you.”  
  
She moans. _“Noooooo…no, no, I didn’t want him to hurt me…”_  
  
He slaps her even harder – he shifts the angle of his hand, he starts to hit her. _Oh! She hears a little scream – it’s HER scream, he’s hitting her – ohhhhhhh_  
  
“Remember, Agat – you must tell the truth in here. You swore to tell the whole truth.”  
  
_In here? What does he mean, ‘in here’?_ She raises her head to look past Julian, to see where she is, where are we?   
  
_We’re in the infirmary._ This is Julian’s bed, where she sleeps with him – but somehow it’s in the brightly lit infirmary. _Why are we here? How is he sleeping?_  
  
We’re not alone. We’re being observed by nurses. Four of them – three men, one woman. And Dax. Dax is here. Dax stands on the other side of the bed, at Julian’s feet. Everyone watches, everyone listens. Except Julian, who sleeps. His beautiful eyes remain closed, his face at peace.   
  
Agathe and I notice the odd contrast between Dukat’s calm speaking voice and the bed-shaking violence he deals with his hand.  
  
“Tell us, Agat. Tell us you wanted the doctor to hit you like this. You wanted it to hurt. Tell us.”  
_It does hurt._ “I didn’t! I didn’t!”  
“Then what did you want? Say what you wanted. Say it clearly.”  
  
“I wanted _YOU_ to hit me and make it hurt! Not Julian! _You!_ ”   
Agathe wants to cry but she can’t, she has no tears.  
  
Dax speaks softly now, calm and non-threatening as ever.   
“Agathe, we need you to speak clearly and tell us exactly who you mean. Who did you want hitting you, if not the doctor? Say his name so we can hear it.”  
  
_but Julian might wake up – he might hear it – no, no – we can’t say it out loud_  
  
“Agat. You must tell us his name.”  
_for fuck’s sake, it’s you, it’s you_  
  
“You _know_ your name!”  
“Yes, but _you_ must say it. It must go on record. Say it here and now while we’re all hearing you.”  
  
Agathe watches Dax, whose blue eyes project safety. She sees her give a small nod of encouragement, one slow tip of her face.  
  
_“Dukat_ ,” Agathe whispers to her.  
Dax inhales and speaks again. “Okay. Repeat it so we can hear you. Use a complete sentence. Speak his full name. Go ahead, Agathe.”  
  
_he’s still hitting her, hitting Agathe’s ass over the bed, everyone can see it, everyone can hear it – everyone but Julian – everyone knows she wants it, it’s obvious she wants it_  
  
I feel her resign herself to what she must do. I help her gather the courage to tell them all what they want to hear, in the way they want to hear it. I’m with her and part of her, and I know how to do this. I settle her gut so she can do it now. She gives them his full name, speaking in a clear, complete sentence, articulating her words distinctly. She speaks with enough volume to be heard by everyone, even as her heart pounds in fear that Julian will wake up and hear her too.   
  
“I wanted Gul Dukat to hit me and I wanted it to hurt.”  
  
Everyone nods in approval. Dax smiles. “Good girl, Agathe. You’re doing just fine.”  
  
Dukat is also satisfied with Agathe’s statement. He stops hitting her. Now he starts to rub her ass cheeks warmly. It feels good. He pulls down her underwear. _ohhhhhhh that feels good, that feels wrong, what will he do now?_ Agathe tingles between her legs in breathless anticipation.   
  
_ohhhhhhh his treasure…ohhhhh she feels it…he’s rubbing it on her where Julian rubbed her with his hand tonight, he’s stroking it back and forth so she can feel how long and warm it is…ohhhhhhh godddddd_  
  
“Agat, do you want to feel me inside you? Tell the truth. Yes or no.”  
  
_oh she DOES want him inside her, how can she not, she FEELS him, she feels his treasure touching her, stroking her, ohhhhhh it kills her it kills her_  
“YES! Please! Oh God, please _PLEASE_!”  
  
But we see Julian stir when Agathe says the word ’yes’ – he breathes in sharply through his nose, his eyelids flutter – then he settles again, still sleeping.   
  
She realizes she can’t say ’yes’. It will wake Julian if she does. She needs to be careful. She can’t let him see what’s happening, hear what she’s saying – hear her begging for Dukat.  
  
But thankfully Dukat heard her just now, heard her say that initial _‘yes’_. He moves his treasure to her opening and _oh god_ he pushes it in, _he gives it to her,_ he slides himself all the way in, _ohhhhhhhh god he’s inside her – finally, finally inside, his treasure, ahhhhhhh…_ she wants to cry in her long-awaited relief but can’t…no tears…she moans instead… _moans and moans,_ wordlessly pleading for more _…_  
  
He holds her hips to steady her and _moves_ himself inside her, he strokes – deep long strokes, slow unhurried strokes, just like Julian did – so she can feel his length, his fullness – so she can feel him caressing her on the inside, pushing through to her deepest reaches, filling her everywhere she wants him, filling her, filling her, _ohhhhh_ ye… _FUCK_ yeah, _ahhhhhhh_ don’t stop don’t stop just keep doing this, please, please Dukat… _ohhhhhhh she wants it, she wants HIM…_ it doesn’t matter that everyone is watching.  
  
She can’t look at Julian while Dukat strokes her exactly like _HE_ did before they slept – smoothly, fully, warmly, steadily – she can’t bear it – she turns her face away from him, toward Dax who stands at his sleeping feet. She rests her cheek on the mattress and closes her eyes, wishing she could drift away on the magic flying carpet of Dukat’s fullness within her…his scaled thickness feels like something that can support her weight, an intact magic carpet…no holes in it, no rips, no fraying threads…it’s solid, she can ride it, she can fly away on it… _ohhhhhh she’s drifting…she doesn’t want to be here…she doesn’t want to answer questions…that’s why she wants to close her eyes and ride away on his treasure inside her…_  
  
It’s not possible. Dukat’s voice pulls her back to the infirmary, back to the bed, back to a new question.  
  
“Agat, answer me. Do you want me to pound you now?”  
“…ohhhhh, I do…” _yes yes pound me, please pound me_  
  
“Yes or no, Agat.”  
_“Yeah…”_  
  
“Say ‘yes’, Agat, not ‘yeah’. Say ‘yes’ unless your answer is ‘no’. Do you understand?”  
“Yeah…I mean _yes_.”  
  
“Good girl. Now – yes or no. Do you want me to pound you?”  
  
He’s still stroking her with his treasure. It feels so good. Of course she wants more of it. _Of course_ she wants him to pound her. She wants him to pound her out of her mind again. Maybe he can make her cry, maybe he can bring back her tears. She won’t care who sees them. She wants him to pound her until she can cry again.  
  
_But she can’t say ‘yes’._ ‘Yes’ means Julian will wake up. Julian will wake to Dukat pounding her over his bed – he’ll wake to Agathe _wanting_ it, _begging_ Dukat for it – right in front of him, directly over his bed. He won’t understand that she needs it. It will hurt him, it will hurt him so horribly. She doesn’t want to hurt Julian. She needs to be pounded, but not if it hurts Julian, _never_ if it injures Julian.  
  
She looks behind her, at Dukat – she wants to plead with him.  
  
I look behind her too, and I see him.  
  
_daddy_  
  
My eyes hold all the water. I can’t help Agathe anymore. I’m deep inside her gut and I’m crying – I cry for Dukat. I cry for _DADDY_. I want daddy. I want him to hold me. I want to tell him I love him. I want everything to be okay. I’m sorry, Agathe. I can’t let go of him. Things are not okay. Nothing is okay. It hurts. I’m sorry. Everything hurts and maybe _YOU_ shoved all the pain and knowledge behind the wall in your mind, but I’m on the other side of it and _I’M HURTING_ and I want daddy, Agathe. I felt him and I want him – and you do too, you do too – because _YOU EXIST HERE TOO_. Stop trying to pretend you’re linear! You exist here with me, _you have to KNOW you do!_  
  
“I’m scared,” she tells Dukat. She feels me crying and trembling, that’s why she says it.  
  
“What are you scared of, sweetie?” he asks her. He wants her to clarify her statement.  
  
She has no idea what she’s scared of. She just holds the word in her mind, because I pass it to her. The word isn’t untrue. She _IS_ scared – because I’m scared – but she can’t explain why. She only knows she feels horrible, so she uses the word I give her.  
  
“I don’t know. I’m just scared,” she mumbles.  
  
“But _why_ are you scared?” he asks again.  
  
_“I don’t know. I just am.”_  
  
He reaches down with his hand and strokes her hair gently, the way that feels like love. His treasure is still buried deep inside her. Everything he’s doing feels so good right now, both ways that he strokes her.  
  
“You’re doing fine, sweetie. You don’t need to be scared. Just answer the questions that you’re asked, and tell the truth. Okay?”  
  
Agathe answers meekly, tremulously. _“Okay.”_  
  
And now daddy’s gone. Dukat seizes her hair with the hand that was just stroking it. He grips it roughly, forcing her to lift her head and turn toward Julian again, compelling her to face him along with Dax and the nurses. She feels the power that he restrains – the same power Julian restrained – she feels the punishing potential in how he holds her by her hair – that’s how she wants him – _rough, punishing, unforgiving –_  
  
He repeats his question, holding her attention by her hair, persistently moving his hips so she feels him deep inside her at every moment.  
“Answer the question, Agat. Yes or no. Do you want me to pound you?”  
  
Can’t wake Julian. _“Oh please…I WANT you to, you KNOW I do…pleeeease…”_  
  
Dax shakes her head. “You need to answer ‘yes’, Agathe. He won’t pound you unless you answer ‘yes’.”  
  
_but Julian!_  
  
Dukat fucks her slowly and steadily, reminding her, “You can say ‘no’ if you don’t want it. But you do have to tell us what you want. Yes or no, Agat.”  
  
_NO NO NO these two words aren’t enough – neither one is true – she’s trapped, she’s trapped – both words are wrong_  
  
They’ll all know she’s lying if she says ‘no’. Agathe knows something bad will happen if they catch her in a lie. She doesn’t know _what_ will happen, but it will be bad. She can’t lie to them. She can’t say ‘no’.  
  
It’s easier to say ‘yes’ – ‘yes’ is the closest to true – ‘yes’ will feel better, it will bring relief – Dukat will pound her if she says ‘yes’ – she already feels him inside her, she can’t forget how he feels – all she has to do is say _‘YES’_ and he’ll take her away. He’ll pound her out of awareness and she won’t have to be here anymore, she won’t have to be _herself_ anymore. If she just says _‘yes’, ‘yes’, ‘yes’,_ then she won’t be ripped apart anymore and all the pain will go away…  
  
But no it won’t – _NO IT WON’T – she’ll injure JULIAN and that will rip her apart – the pain will last forever – oh God no no noooooooo_  
  
_‘yes’ isn’t true if it hurts Julian – it’s a lie, it’s a lie, it’s a lie – it’s a LIE if it hurts Julian, it will KILL her if she hurts Julian_  
  
It’s not enough to give her only these two words! Don’t they want the whole truth? Nobody knows, nobody sees! She’s scared! She’s scared!  
  
_“NOOOOOOO!!!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!!!”_  
  
_“Agathe! Baby!”_ Julian was awake now, trying to hold Agathe as she screamed. She lay on her stomach next to him but when she realized he was awake she scrambled away from him and off the bed, onto the floor. She wasn’t really aware of doing that. She sobbed on the floor next to the bed, completely disoriented. She cried wet tears now. She felt Dukat inside her and Julian had woken up. She thought she was still in her dream, and she felt guilty and scared and small and ashamed. She felt Dukat inside her and she craved his pounding and she didn’t want Julian to see. She hunched herself into a ball over her knees, shaking.   
  
_“Oh Agathe honey, baby…”_  
  
She felt something softly settling over her shoulders, over her back. A blanket. Julian had pulled the blanket off the bed and come around to cover her, because she was naked and shivering and appeared to be terrified. He knelt in front of her, sitting on his heels, bending down to hold her head between his hands and kiss her hair. She sensed the nearness of his thighs, like Dukat’s daddy thighs, feeling their overpowering pull toward warmth and comfort. She raised herself just enough to weakly impel her body forward and melt onto his lap, face-down. He was naked like she was, and her tears flowed directly into his _julian_ fragranced hair. His un-hard goodness felt soft and safe to her. She wanted to nuzzle it with her face.   
  
I sensed a small part of herself quietly returning to awareness – coming around enough to know he’d think she was crazy if she nuzzled her face on his flaccid penis – we hate the word ‘flaccid’, it’s so unsexy – but that’s exactly what it would be if she nuzzled his penis with her lips, with her nose – unsexy, unhinged, fucking nuts. She resisted the urge, but allowed herself one seemingly accidental rub across it as she turned her face to the side for air and settled her cheek on him, resting it directly on his inactive dick.   
  
It wasn’t treasure, it wasn’t even goodness – it was _safety,_ it was _care_. It wouldn’t push itself inside her, nail her, pound her. It asked for nothing from her, no responses, no answers. It was quiet and gentle and it just _stayed_ with her, under her cheek.   
  
Julian held her head on his lap and stroked her hair until she was warm and stopped shivering, and even then he continued to hold and soothe her. She hoped his legs wouldn’t fall asleep underneath him. She didn’t want to hurt him.  
  



	8. Miles

  
Sometimes Agathe thinks all the beauty in the universe must necessarily hurt. At least the _most beautiful_ beauty has to hurt. Like when she first noticed Julian’s lips at Quark’s and felt the pulsing sting of her longing to touch them. Their curved definition triggered a gut-wrenching awareness of deep-seated disorder and chaos within herself. She yearned to pull the peace of his lips into her heart and hoard it like stolen treasure from the heavens – steal first, beg forgiveness later.  
  
_Oh she had wanted Julian_ – his lips had made her feel like the only way to purchase the right to touch and hold him was to raid some kind of galactic _most holy place_ and die for her brazen transgression. Somehow her payment of death would purify her own lips sufficiently to be worthy of living again and touching his. That’s how Julian’s beauty and peace hurt her that night. It stabbed her heart with the icy coldness of its seemingly astronomical distance from her, with the blood-freezing chill of its unfathomable inaccessibility.   
  
_“God help me…why did everything have to hurt?”_ she wrote, about wanting his lips.  
  
I can tell you the same thing happened again last night. Agathe witnessed an ambushing moment of beauty and peace that pierced her heart with the same gutting pain of _longing, longing, longing_ for something she can only ever feel the _ABSENCE_ of as strongly as she wishes to feel its _SUBSTANCE._  
  
With all these goddamned words, I’m trying to say it fucking hurt.   
  
She watched Chief O’Brien lifting his little girl into his arms – holding her, hugging her, speaking sweetly to her, kissing her. I’m saying it fucking _knifed_ her. In the gut. She reeled from my pain. _I’m sorry, Agathe. But what can I do? Little Agat refuses to die, and you have to feel me because I’m part of you. I want daddy. You do too._  
  
Miles and Julian had planned an evening of playtime in the holosuite together, and Keiko had invited Agathe to come pass the time with her while the guys were out. Agathe and Julian arrived at the O’Brien’s quarters just at Molly’s bedtime.   
  
Little Molly protested when she saw that her dad was dressed up for fun and about to leave. _“Daddy, I want to come, I want to come!”_  
  
Miles picked her up, returning her pout with a warm twinkling smile – a smile just for his little honey. He held his loving face close to hers. She sat on his arm, pressed into his side – body relaxed, legs dangling, head perfectly positioned to snuggle against his available chest if she wished. Little girl and father man. Beauty and peace.   
  
Agathe desires to press into a man like this. She did, long ago. When she saw Miles holding Molly, she remembered the physical feeling. The memory made her ache. The ache hit her _hard_ , just as Dukat did. She wanted _love_ to follow the aching blow – the love she saw embodied right in front of her – daddy love, leg-wrappable daddy love – _right there, right there, oh right there_. But of course Miles’ beautiful love wasn’t hers to hold, to swallow into herself – it was _Molly’s_. Molly didn’t know what she had. She just got to nestle into her daddy and dangle her legs in innocent peace.  
  
His beautiful daddy voice. “You can come with us when you’re bigger, sweetie – I promise. Now be a good girl and go to bed so you can sleep. Little girls need _lots of sleep_ to get big enough to come play with their daddies.” He kissed her and carried her to her bedroom.  
  
Remember when Dukat first spoke Agathe’s name in Ops? When he sort of rolled it in his mouth, tasting it? _“Agat…”_ He was touching her. He’d placed his hands on either side of her face and begun gently caressing her. Only moments before this, he’d seized her hair and yanked her mouth off his neck. _Punishment and love._ His _“probing tenderness”_ felt like love to her. She wouldn’t have said that, of course. She didn’t have that thought in her mind. What she did have was tears. _“Oh shit, this strangely gentle treatment was going to make me fucking cry,”_ she wrote.  
  
I’m writing for Agathe now. I can report that seeing Chief O’Brien hold his little girl was going to make her fucking cry again, _FUCKING CRY NOW._ She hates to be seen crying. She hates even more to be seen crying when there appears to be _no reason_ for it. Miles and Julian were about to take off, and Agathe would be left alone to socialize with Keiko – _crying_ in the O’Brien’s quarters like a fucking nutcase.   
  
The tears were going to happen, there was no holding them back. She spoke quickly before she would lose her voice completely, asking Keiko if she could use their bathroom. Oh yes, of course she could – it was right over there. With the very last of her holding-it-together strength, Agathe managed a light kiss on Julian’s sweet lips, telling him to have fun and she’d see him later. Then she casually fled to the private refuge of the bathroom where she immediately sank to the cold floor, willing her roaring flash flood of tears to wash her away silently, as silently as humanly possible.  
  
She felt embarrassed by how long it took to pull herself together enough to leave the bathroom and dare to reenter the living area. When she finally emerged, she was relieved to find that her prolonged use of the facilities had gone unnoticed because Keiko was in Molly’s bedroom – reading her a bedtime story, from the sound of it. That was good because Agathe knew her eyes were still reddened, and she didn’t trust her voice not to give her away either. It was likely she’d start crying again if she tried to speak too soon.   
  
She sat down on the end of one of the couches, studying the bonsai tree on the side table beside it. I felt her begin to relax a little, her eyes having found a safe object to focus on while she continued subduing her secret emotional outburst.  
  
The tree looked as though it was reaching for something beyond its pot. Not high above it, but over to the side. Leaning, pulling. Agathe imagined stretching out her entire body to reach for something in this manner, feet planted – perhaps grasping for Miles’ glowing daddy embrace. The object of her desire was of course unreachable. In her mind she lost her balance and tipped over – falling, crashing – never having touched what she sought to hold. Perhaps this living _objet d’art_ wasn’t helping to quiet her mind so much after all.  
  
“What do you think of Miles’ tender loving care?” Keiko glided into view, carrying a serving tray bearing a teapot and two cups. “I made us some peppermint tea – please, help yourself.”  
  
Agathe froze in wide-eyed chagrin at the teasing question. _Shit…had her feelings been that obvious?_ She watched numbly as her hostess set the tea tray on the coffee table.   
  
“Shhh, don’t tell him.” Keiko’s eyes shone playfully. “You’re looking at one of my experiments. I gave him instructions for watering and nurturing it, but I left the sculpting entirely up to him. Just for this one – it’s the only tree I could bring myself to sacrifice to chance.”  
  
_“Ohhh,”_ Agathe breathed again. “You mean…Miles…you left him in charge of how this tree grows?”   
  
Keiko giggled. “Yes, but he doesn’t know I’m paying attention! It’s my little game. I like to see what he might do while I’m gone. If he’s shy, he won’t do anything. He’ll just water it and let it grow naturally. But if he feels _adventurous_ , he might try sculpting it. It’s an Idran hybrid, so it grows quickly and you can see it change over a very short period of time. I never know what it’ll look like when I come home to visit. It’s been fun! It feels like I get to spy on him.”  
  
“That’s so cute! Do you think he’s been…feeling bold?” Agathe asked.  
  
“Yes, I actually think he has! Can you believe it? Look how it’s growing sideways instead of up and out. This tree has transformed _dramatically_ since I first left it to his tending.”   
  
Keiko’s eyes sparkled. “You know what else has transformed dramatically?”  
  
Agathe waited, unable to interpret Keiko’s grin.  
  
“You have, Agathe! I can see how well _Julian’s_ been tending you.”  
  
Keiko reacted to the hot blush I felt in Agathe’s face. “Oh – I didn’t mean it like _that!_ I meant…well, remember our double date last time I was here? The concert?”  
  
“Oh my God, _yes_.” Agathe melted a little, thinking about it. “That was so sweet of Julian! I still can’t get over how thoughtful he was to make that holosuite program for me. I hope you and Miles liked it! I wasn’t sure the music would appeal to you, but Julian had grown to love it and he thought you would too.”  
  
“Are you kidding? It was amazing! It really surprised me. I had no idea it would be so dramatic. And _moving_. The beginning sounded like it was perfect for a holo-horror-tragedy-novel, but then the piano finally started and it sounded so soft and… _loving_. And the slow part in the middle…oh, that was _sublime_. I remember it specifically because I glanced over at your row and saw you and Julian making out like you had the place all to yourselves…who knows what you would have done if you _had_ …”  
  
Keiko winked and laughed before gasping at another recollection. “And that concert hall! Somewhere in Germany, wasn’t it…no, it was _Austria!_ It looked like an old palace. It was _breathtaking!_ What a treat that was. It was such a unique evening. I hope we didn’t forget to thank you for inviting us.”  
  
Agathe has a favorite recording that our father gave her years ago, not long after I began to exist with her, exist in my time and place. The gift is very special to her because she loves the music and also because our father chose it. It’s two nineteenth-century piano concertos written by the composer Johannes Brahms – the only two he wrote. After Julian noticed Agathe frequently listening to the first of them – like, _all_ the time – he surprised her by recreating a live performance of it. The actual event took place almost four hundred years ago, but evidently he’d been able to provide the computer with the necessary data – the soloist, the symphony musicians, the venue, the contemporary fashions – so many realistic details. He’d even specified a sparse audience so it felt like an exclusive occasion. The experience had been unforgettably transporting for Agathe, watching and listening to her beloved piece of music in such a resplendent historical live setting, holding hands with Julian. And making out with him, too. It couldn’t have been more captivating and memorable.   
  
“I’m so glad you enjoyed it. That middle part when we were, you know…” Agathe blushed again. “It’s because for me, all of it sounds exactly like how Julian makes me feel. Like if he was music, he’d be the slow movement of that concerto. I feel his arms around me when I listen to it. I feel him holding me and kissing me. I feel…I feel _him_. He’s _in_ that music. I don’t know how to explain it.”  
  
“Well, you should _figure out_ how to explain it – and tell him!” Keiko declared emphatically.   
  
“What? No! How? That would be so cheesy.”  
  
“No, not at all! Agathe, you didn’t _hear_ yourself just now. What you said – the _way_ you said it – I think it was so romantic. I doubt Julian’s _ever_ heard anything like that from any of his other girls.”  
  
_…his other girls…_  
  
Something deflated inside Agathe. It probably showed in her eyes. But Keiko kept speaking and we could hear that she hadn’t meant anything belittling.  
  
“Oh! That brings me back to what I was starting to tell you. You’ve transformed while I’ve been away, like this tree. I didn’t recognize you that night when Miles and I first saw you outside the holosuite. I knew ’Agathe’ worked in Ops, so I looked at you and wondered ‘who’s this _fashion model_ on Julian’s arm?’”   
  
Keiko chuckled at the memory. “It really confused me until I finally remembered seeing you on the station before. I’d met you. Miles introduced us once, in the replimat. We ate in a group together. We even conversed a little. It had been weeks since then…months, I suppose…and then I saw you with Julian and you didn’t look like the same person! You looked like – you looked like the kind of woman I always _expect_ to see with him.”  
  
She grimaced. “I’m sorry, I’m putting my foot in it. I just mean to say you’ve _changed_ since you’ve been with Julian. It’s noticeable. Miles sees it too. You look like a different person. And Julian _adores_ you, Agathe. I can see how happy he feels with you.”  
  
_…like a different person…happy with her…_  
  
Agathe blew on her cup of hot tea to cool it, carefully sipping from it with the same degree of focus she had devoted to the tree just a few minutes earlier. Once again, she didn’t trust herself to speak.   
  
Do you know she’s been looking at pictures of herself? No, you don’t know.  
  
She’s been looking at pictures of _me._ She’s felt curious lately, compelled. Ever since that dream, really. She felt me look back at Dukat and see _daddy_. She sensed the meaning of what was happening to us in front of Julian. She felt little Agat with her, and ever since then a part of her awareness has been touching around my edges with cautious fingertips, probing at me – within her gut – with careful inquisitiveness.   
  
Our father loved to take pictures of Agathe when she spent her visitation time with him. She saved a few of them on a PADD. From time to time over the years she has dared to glance at them. It’s difficult for her to look. Her eyes don’t want to hold still – they strain to pull away from the images. It’s because she’s looking directly at something – at _someone_ – on the other side of her black steel wall. She must swallow anger and terror to look behind the wall. That’s why she’s so uncomfortable with these pictures. It hurts on my side. The pain hits her when she looks.  
  
And I hurt too, when she wills her eyes to hold still and focus on me. Because she looks at me with loathing and shame and…and _denial, rejection_. She wouldn’t want you to think she’s shallow, but…  
  
I’m ugly. I just am.   
  
I’m the ugly that people recoil from, the way Agathe recoiled that day in Ops when she saw Gul Dukat in his pre-recorded messages. She wrote that she felt ashamed of her reflexive reaction to his appearance, because she didn’t want to be _“unfair”_ to him, she was _“sensitive”_ about it, she could _“relate”_ to not being seen past her own exterior.   
  
That’s _MY_ exterior she was writing about. She doesn’t want to see past it. She doesn’t want to see herself. She doesn’t want to claim me as the same person she is.   
  
_Linear_ Agathe – Keiko’s “different person” – Julian’s “girl” – beautiful “transformed” Agathe – she recoils reflexively from _MY_ appearance. She wrote that she “ _looked pretty damn awkward as a kid – really wasn’t pretty – more like the opposite.”_ She wrote that she could _“say that with detachment now._ ”  
  
_…detachment…_  
  
Detached. She wants to be detached from me.   
  
She thinks she is, but knows she isn’t. That’s an additional layer of discomfort she feels while looking at pictures of me. She knows. _SHE KNOWS._ We’re not detached, we can’t be. _SHE_ is the girl she’s looking at. This girl’s name is Agathe. This _IS_ Agathe. She tries to look away and not know it.  
  
Oh, she feels the sadness in her gut – _my_ sadness. The sadness saturates the pictures. The girl’s eyes are embedded in dark circles – she’s tired. Tired from insufficient sleep and rest and peace. Tired from bearing the weight of fundamental undesirability. Tired from being backed into cold walls. Tired from being pulled apart and learning to lie about love – lie to everyone, lie to _herself_ – lie until even her breaths are lies, even her heart is a lie.   
  
_Ugly, tired, sad._  
_Trapped in her lies._  
  
Agathe stared into her hot tea, sipping carefully, trying not to flinch as Keiko’s well-meaning words sprinkled over her like shrapnel confetti made of tiny barbs and shards of pretty shiny metal.   
  
_you look like a different person_  
_julian adores you_  
_he feels happy with you_  
  
Keiko referred to Agathe’s appearance as “ _fashion model”_. Dax makes similar observations – Agathe should see herself walking the Promenade with Julian – they _“turn heads.”_ They make a beautiful couple – striking, stunning together.   
  
It’s taken some time, but Agathe can finally recognize her beauty because of how Julian looks at her. He breathes it to her from the truth and desire in his eyes. She sees herself through his gaze and his touch. And she _IS_ aware of how people look at her when she’s with him.   
  
_Julian’s girl._ She loves looking fucking glamorous on his arm. It feels good. She’s learned to play up the physical features that so many people evidently consider optimal. Nobody’s staring at her inadequate tits. They see her flowing hair, her shapely shoulders and arms, her height, her smooth and slender frame, her tight ass, her long legs. Julian sees her green eyes. She enhances them with makeup for him. She loves to present herself as this _image of desirability_ , and she understands that she _gets it_ , that she succeeds, that people see it and accept it and admire it. She serves herself to Julian as this image. She loves knowing that she decorates him this way. As Julian’s girl, she feels like a puzzle piece that has found its long-sought place.  
  
But this exterior success, this finding her place in a puzzle – this is exactly how she has always wanted to run from _me_ , leaving me to die like a flopping, suffocating fish. She has always wanted to run _miles_ away from me – miles of years and beauty away from the time and place where I exist.   
  
She has wanted to run miles away, and with Julian she seems to be gaining ground. She covers miles of turning heads as the doctor’s new glamorous girl. Miles of being desired again and again and again by her adoring lover. Miles of being seen as a _DIFFERENT PERSON._ If she becomes a different person _completely_ , then little Agat dies. The more distance she covers, the more I gasp for air. I’m flopping, I’m suffocating, I’m dying.   
  
The bitter irony is that as her outer, _linear_ transformation takes solid hold, she has begun to _identify_ with my flopping agony and it makes her feel sad and angry and defensive. _NOW_ she grows aware that a part of herself is being left behind, and she feels that _SHE_ is suffocating, that _SHE_ is dying and being forgotten – and she flops and doesn’t _want_ to die.   
  
She may have wanted to kill me in Julian – to _END_ parts of herself in his heaven – but as she leaves me miles behind her, she struggles to continue denying the longing that I have felt the whole time. She struggles not to know that she wants Julian to tackle her to the ground and press his assurances into _ME._ She _DOES_ want him to see me, she _DOES_ want him to know me, she _DOES_ want him to breathe her name into me, breathe life into me, _HOLD_ me so I don’t fall away into forgotten nothingness.   
  
If Julian doesn’t hold _me_ , then he doesn’t hold _her_. She’s beginning to know it.  
  
But she’s afraid he won’t be happy with her anymore if he holds me. He adores Agathe the _different person,_ the beautiful transformed _DIFFERENT PERSON._ Can he still adore and feel happy with her if he knows who she _really_ is, if she shows him the girl in her pictures and tells him _THIS is me, THIS is Agathe_?   
  
She spirals into panic at the thought of revealing me to Julian.   
  
_The girl in the pictures is an UGLY LIAR who doesn’t deserve to be loved without being punished._  
_No, she can’t show her to Julian. He can’t love her. How could he?_  
  
_Better if she keeps hiding herself. She won’t be able to keep up the charade forever anyway. Eventually he’ll discover her, who she is, WHAT she is._  
_Better just enjoy what she has now, before she loses him. Because she WILL lose him. He’ll either discover her true nature or else he’ll die, like Justin did._  
  
_Nothing good can last._  
_Love leaves, love dies._  
  
_No one can really know her and love her anyway._  
_She only deserves to be punished._  
  
_Julian’s love is too good for her, she’s known it all along._  
  
This disordered mass of thoughts swirled in Agathe’s mind as she sipped her tea, listening to Keiko’s friendly compliments about her beauty and Julian’s happiness with her. Again, again – _oh shit, this gentle treatment was going to make her fucking cry –_ how would she explain herself? She didn’t want to open up and dump all her depressing angsty craziness on the coffee table between them, as she’d dropped the word _‘mother’_ on the replimat table in front of Dax.   
  
Agathe searched her disquieted mind for a thought that would match her wet eyes and somehow also make sense in the context of Keiko’s remarks to her. She found one and grabbed hold.  
  
“Oh, I feel so happy with him too. But can I be honest with you?”   
  
“ _Please,_ of course. Tell me what’s on your mind.” Keiko focused compassionate eyes on Agathe, hearing how her voice cracked and strained with emotion.  
  
_“I’ve never been so afraid of losing someone.”_ Agathe pressed her hands to her face and inhaled deeply, trying to control her renewed flow of tears. “I don’t talk about this to Julian. I’m trying to be mature about it, you know? But I worry about him when he leaves. Like every time he’s away on the _Defiant_. I’m a wreck while he’s gone, thinking _‘this is it’_ – this time he won’t come back – this time something will happen to him and I’ll never see him again.”  
  
She continued as Keiko listened attentively. “I tell myself he’s doing his _job_ , this is what he _does_ , this is what makes him who he _is_. But I can’t ever shake the dread. And my imagination runs away with me. I worry about every single thing that could possibly go wrong. Especially since he told me what happened when he went to Earth for that Starfleet symposium about the Gamma Quadrant.”  
  
“Oh, I remember that,” Keiko nodded soberly. “Miles was there too. That _was_ unsettling.”  
  
“Yeah – it was. I’m still freaked out about it! He wasn’t even on some dangerous mission, and he almost got – just – _LOST_. Like, lost in _time_. I already worry about him getting killed, but now I can’t stop thinking about being separated from him by _centuries_. I imagine him being alive but hundreds of years away. I would never see him again! And I guess he wouldn’t even be alive anymore, technically…if he was stuck back in time…oh God that’s right, he’d actually be _dead…shit_ …”  
  
She looked at Keiko pleadingly. “Keiko, how the fuck do you _deal_ with it? Pardon my language, sorry…”  
  
Keiko smiled softly. “That’s okay. Believe me, I understand how you feel. It’s not unreasonable. They really _do_ risk their lives. It’s better not to be in denial about it.”  
  
_…denial…she’s right, denial feels so safe and familiar but it’s really a wolf in sheep’s clothing…it bites, it kills…_  
  
“I think about it too, Agathe. And really, something could happen to _any_ of us, at any time. Even you and me – it’s not like _our_ safety is guaranteed. Miles doesn’t know this, but I actually record a goodbye message for him every time I go back to Bajor. Just in case. We get into stupid little quarrels sometimes, and I just want him to know how much I love him. I want him to hear how happy I am to be his wife.”   
  
“But – I also try to make sure we’re not in the middle of an argument when I leave. I guess that would be my first piece of advice to you. Try not to leave anything unresolved.”  
  
Agathe stared helplessly. _Any ‘thing’ unresolved? How about just her entire being…_  
  
“Maybe I should rephrase that. _Unresolved issues_ – it’s probably too soon for you and Julian to worry about those.” Keiko rolled her eyes, shaking her head. “Let me try again.”  
  
“Don’t leave anything _unsaid,_ Agathe. If there’s anything you need to say to him…anything you need to ask him…don’t wait. Don’t wait for tomorrow. I’m not saying that will help you _worry_ any less. Truthfully, I don’t know that it gets any easier. But remember, most of the things you worry about are out of your control. Something you _can_ control is what you leave – and don’t leave – hanging between you and Julian.”   
  
“For me, I figure that if I don’t leave some _thing_ hanging, then it can’t eat at me while Miles is away. And every little bit of weight that I lift away – it helps. It lightens the burden. It can’t make it any _heavier_ , at any rate. Does that make sense to you?”  
  
“Yeah…” Agathe nodded slowly. “I mean, _yes_. Thanks, Keiko.”  
  



	9. Shock

  
_Unsaid._  
  
There _was_ something.   
  
It had bothered Agathe ever since… _ever since it happened._  
  
_it_  
  
_when Justin was killed_  
  
  
  
  
  
Agathe remembers those moments in pieces.   
  
She remembers seeing the last remaining edges of her friend, his vanishing shell – hollow, shimmering.   
  
She remembers hitting the floor when Julian grabbed her and pulled her under the table with him.  
  
She remembers a haze of noise – shouting, disruptor blasts.   
Sudden quiet.  
Julian’s hand on her arm.  
  
The echo of Gul Dukat’s voice in her mind.  
  
Gul Dukat’s voice?   
  
Julian! Julian! Did I hear _Gul Dukat_?  
  
  
  
  
  
Agathe and Julian sat at a little replimat table, over an afternoon cup of tea. Chai latte for her, Tarkalean for him. She _did_ think Keiko’s advice made sense. She gathered her courage, reminding herself that this didn’t need to be a confrontation. Julian was safe. He wasn’t Hera. He wasn’t all rage and no reason. Far from it. _Far from it._ He had always been safe.   
  
And he was _good_ to her. It made all the sense in the world for Agathe to bring this up – the thing she planned to talk about – to bring it up so it wouldn’t be left hanging anymore. It made sense even if Julian had no idea anything _was_ hanging, no idea that anything was _unsaid_ between them.   
  
Agathe’s intentions were good, she assured herself. But her heart still pounded as she took his hand and opened her mouth to speak.  
  
She focused her eyes on his hand, caressing it with her thumb.  
  
“Julian.”  
“Yes, baby?”  
“There’s something I need…to tell you.”  
“Okay, honey.” He waited.  
  
“Do you remember…do you remember when Justin was killed?”  
Julian took a few moments to silently adjust his attention to the gravity of her question. “Yes. Of course.”   
  
Agathe sensed his focused gaze and looked up at his eyes. She saw cashmere as always. His eyes could soothe any pain, even if they were to hold sorrow of their own. She falls in love with him all over again whenever he looks at her this deeply. The world around her seems to fade away.  
  
She returned his gaze now, breathing his safety into herself. The trouble was – she hadn’t felt safe with him that day in Ops. He had been hardened to her. Not later, in the infirmary. In the infirmary he’d been her Julian. But in Ops…  
  
“You may not remember this, but…when Dukat showed up…I heard him but I didn’t know what he was saying.”  
  
Julian snorted softly. “You didn’t need to. He never shuts up. He was just gloating over our predicament. Being a fucking asshole. I’m surprised he didn’t whip out his dick and start jerking off in front of us.”  
  
Agathe allowed a corner of her mouth to twist into a tiny smirk. She couldn’t help it. _The visual…_  
  
“Julian…you say that now, but…”  
  
_out with it, Agathe, come on_  
  
“But when I asked you what he had said, you looked at me strangely. Like you were thinking…why the hell is she asking me what Dukat said, didn’t she hear him? You said that. You said _‘you heard him, didn’t you?’_ ”  
  
“And I _had_ heard him, Julian – but not really. I heard his voice but not his words. I had just seen Justin…” She sighed heavily. “God. I had just seen him _vaporized_. I didn’t know what to say to you. I told you I guessed I’d been in shock…about Justin.”  
  
“Yes, that would be understandable. That was a horrible thing to see. I saw it, too.”  
“But that’s not…that’s not what you said to me.”  
  
A little furrow appeared between Julian’s brows.   
“What did I say?”  
  
“You said, _‘things happen’_. That we all know the risks when we join Starfleet. You said I should have been able to handle the stress, because of my training. And you said…you said I wasn’t showing clinical signs of shock.”  
  
Agathe nearly didn’t make it to the end of what felt to her like an exercise in driving thankless nails into her Julian. The intensely unhappy expression on his face frightened her. Her voice had lowered to a volume barely above a whisper, and she found herself watching his hand again, the one she caressed with her thumb.  
  
But she wasn’t finished. _Don’t leave anything unsaid._  
  
“You hurt my feelings, Julian. I felt like something was wrong with me. I felt like I didn’t belong in Starfleet.”  
  
_I felt so small and angry at myself. I would never have fucked Gul Dukat if you hadn’t made me feel that way._  
  
Holy shit, where had _that_ come from? She wasn’t going to say _that_ to him! She wasn’t going to blame Julian for…for what happened with _Dukat!_ She was rational enough not to…not to believe…not to believe THAT…right? How had that thought even entered her mind?  
  
Wasn’t this the same beautiful man who hadn’t allowed her to blame herself for the way he’d touched her in the infirmary? The same heavenly love who’d taught her that she couldn’t hold herself accountable for _his_ feelings and what _he_ did with them?  
  
It was going one outrageous step too far, to blame _Julian_ for her self-directed anger, for her horniness for Dukat which had risen like a dark and twisted phoenix from that anger…no, she _DIDN’T_ believe it to be true…she would never breathe a word of this to him…never, _NEVER_.  
  
But it was true enough that his words had hurt her feelings. At least she wouldn’t leave that hanging any longer.  
  
“Agathe…”  
  
“I’m sorry, Julian,” she whispered.  
  
“Agathe. Baby. Honey. Don’t say that. Don’t say you’re sorry.”  
He placed his free hand on her cheek. So warm.   
“I’m the one who should say I’m sorry. I mean, _I am_. Please forgive me, Agathe. I can’t believe I said that to you.”  
  
He exhaled sharply. “I mean I really…God, you must have thought I was such a _prick._ ”  
“Actually…” Agathe smiled a little, “that exact word _may_ have come to mind…”  
  
“Baby, I don’t know why the hell I would have spoken to you like that.” Julian fell silent, thinking. He caressed her face with his thumb, just as Agathe did with her thumb on his hand.  
“Ohhhhh I _do_ know. I do know why.”  
  
“ _Oh, Agathe._ You didn’t know how much I cared for you. I remember pulling you under the table with me. I saw what happened to Justin. The only thought in my mind at that moment was to not let it happen to you too. Baby. _I couldn’t imagine losing you like that…_ ”   
  
He leaned over and kissed her. It started as a gentle kiss but quickly deepened as she pushed into him to absorb the fullness of his intimate touch. He pulled her to himself with the hand he’d pressed to her cheek, holding her face firmly to his own.   
  
“Mmm,” Julian murmured. “Your chai tastes good on your lips.”  
“Not as good as _you_ taste on my lips…” Agathe purred, infusing her voice with strategically naughty import.   
He growled. “ _Now_ how will I get any work done this afternoon?”  
“Relax…I’ll take good care of you tonight,” she promised.  
“I know you will. I’ll think of nothing else until you do.”   
  
Agathe loves to see how his eyes shine when he thinks about her lips.   
  
But I’m forgetting to return to the conversation – what they had been talking about before they started kissing. Julian remembered. He still wanted to explain how he had felt in Ops that day, when he had hurt her feelings with his hard words.  
  
“Baby, I had a crush on you. I tried to keep it professional between us, but I saw you come so close to disaster that day. I saw you moments away from being killed like Justin was. I must have overcompensated for how I was feeling. I may have been trying to hold _myself_ together. I can’t think of why else I would have spoken so coldly. I’m sure all I wanted to do was hold you in my arms. But instead of doing that, I just – I was an _idiot_ , from what it sounds like.”  
  
“No, not an idiot. Just a prick.” Agathe teased.  
  
They laughed and kissed again.   
  
There. Now the number of things _unsaid_ was decreased by one _._  
  



	10. Blame

  
Agathe started to keep her promise to Julian that night, to take care of him. She started but he finished – he took care of himself by taking care of _her_ – good care.   
  
She needed a few minutes to come down from her high afterwards, purring and kissing his chest, rubbing her breasts on him worshipfully, telling him how fucking delicious he was, how good he made her feel, how big and hard he felt inside her, how much she loved his beautiful cock.   
  
It usually makes him laugh softly when she writhes all over him in her post-orgasmic frenzy of appreciation, describing his attributes to him in joyfully explicit detail. She can’t help it. He leaves her feeling satisfied and ravenous all at once – hungrily _satiated_ , insatiably _hungry_ – completely alive, thoroughly destroyed. After he does her this good she needs a little time to calm down and fade like a covered flame consuming its last remaining oxygen before it dies.   
  
At last she drifted into blissfully _done_ sleep beside her Julian, pressed into his body heat, one leg woven languidly between his thighs.   
  
She slept and we dreamed.   
  
  
  
  
  
_His goodness feels big and hard inside her._  
  
_He’s chosen an incredible angle…his goodness reaches and hits such a deep place within her, oh so DEEP, he feels like a sampling drill…she’s an ancient glacier and he drills into her depths to extract an ice core for geological research…so deep, so far…the longest drill possible…ohhhhhhhh_  
  
It’s brightly lit in Ops. Agathe lies naked on the ops table facing up, positioned at the edge of it where Julian stands holding her legs, drilling her deliciously, deeply, demonstratively.  
  
She can’t see him but she knows it’s Julian because she recognizes the heavenly feel of his goodness inside her. She knows him so well. He feels wonderful.  
  
She can’t see him because Gul Dukat occupies the forefront of her view.  
  
Dukat sits straddling her, high up on her chest near her neck. This works well, the way things often do in dreams – both men have plenty of room to tend to her body as needed.  
  
_Ohhhhhhh his thighs_  
  
Dukat’s naked thighs pin her, trap her, overtake her world. His weight is heavy on her and she breathes with greater effort than usual. The table is cold and hard against the back of her head, but she feels safe and secure under his suffocating warmth, reassured by his scaled mass which dominates her the way she knows she’s been craving for so long.  
  
He grasps his treasure in his hand, squeezing, pulling, yanking – jerking off above her neck, near her mouth. She watches. He is beautiful. Oh, her hand can feel him too, as she watches. So thick, so full, so beautiful. She wants to feel him inside her like that. His treasure is warm. So close to her lips. Her mouth waters. She feels the warmth of his treasure, his big hand hard at work, his thighs. Oh she wants his warmth to fill her. She wants everything inside her to be replaced with _him_. She wants to become a furnace blazing with his heat.  
  
“Agat.”  
  
Her dark and glowing god speaks to her from above.   
  
“Do you want to feel my treasure inside your mouth?”  
  
_“Oh I do, I do…”_  
  
He touches the tip of it to her bottom lip. _Ohhhhhhhhh warm_. She immediately closes her lips around him.  
  
“No.” He lifts it away. “You may only lick, Agat. Do you understand?”  
“I understand.”  
  
“Good girl. Let’s try again.”  
  
He presses himself to her lip, applying pressure to pull and work her mouth open again, rubbing the warm roundness of his tip against her wet inner skin. Her heart pounds. She yearns to suck. But she obeys his instructions and moves only her tongue. She licks as much surface area of his treasure as he makes available to her. The part she can lick tastes so good.   
  
Now she wants more, more – _all_. She wants to take all of him into herself. She instantly feels desperate for his treasure to consume all the space in her mouth. She is in agony. She suffers from the hollowness of his absence deep inside her, deep inside her mouth.  
  
“Agat, do you want me to stuff your mouth with my treasure?”  
  
“ _Ohhhhhhh_ I need you to, I need you…please, _please_ …”  
  
“Answer the question, Agat. Do you want me to stuff your mouth with myself?”  
  
“ _I DO_ , I need you all the way inside me, _down my throat…_ ”  
  
“Answer yes or no, Agat.”  
  
She hesitates. She still feels Julian. He’s so deep inside her, there’s no question he’ll be able to hear if she says ‘yes’. He doesn’t know how she _needs_ Dukat. He won’t understand. She’ll hurt his feelings. She doesn’t want to.  
  
But she also feels the treasure on her tongue. _Ohhhhh…_ she’s weak. It feels so right, so inevitable. She gives in and tremulously whispers her desire.   
  
_“…yes…”_  
  
“Remember to speak up, Agat, so everyone can hear you,” Dukat instructs.   
  
She becomes aware of her observers. Everyone from _that day_ in Ops. Minus Justin. Plus Dukat. The team, gathered at the table again. Kira and Dax to her left, Garak and Commander Sisko to her right. _Sisko_ …he hadn’t been there that day. But he’s here now. She feels comforted by his presence near her head. What about Chief O’Brien? Yes, he’s there next to where Julian’s shoulder should be, his right shoulder.   
  
Everyone listens closely so they won’t miss her answer – yes or no – does she want Dukat to stuff her mouth with his treasure?  
  
She’ll try to soften the blow to Julian. Maybe they’ll let her. She looks up boldly and fixes her gaze on Dukat, making direct eye contact, speaking clearly, resolutely.  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, I want you. I want you all the way in my mouth.”  
  
It doesn’t work. He isn’t fooled. The rules haven’t changed.  
  
“Say ‘yes’, Agat, not ‘yeah’. Say ‘yes’ unless your answer is ‘no’. Do you understand?”  
“Yeah…I understand… _yes_.”  
  
“Good. Let’s hear your answer now. Tell us yes or no.”  
  
She has to say ‘yes’. No choice. She’s already whispered it. Some of them _heard_ her whisper it. So now she has to say it.   
  
“Yes.” The word rings out over the table with definition and cruel finality.  
  
_I’m sorry, Julian_  
  
She can’t tell if Julian heard her. But he _must have!_ She’s sure he can hear everything. His feelings must be hurt. But she doesn’t feel him react. He keeps drilling her as deeply as ever. Would he do that if he could hear what she said? Would he be so good to her after hearing her explicitly confess that she wants Gul Dukat to stuff her mouth with himself?  
  
“ _Good_ , Agat – that was very clear. Now we need you to confirm that the doctor hurt your feelings after Justin was killed. Is it true that he hurt your feelings?”  
  
“He didn’t mean to. And he apologized.” Agathe protests.  
  
Dax speaks gently, non-threateningly. “We need a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’, Agathe. Your answer will go on record, so it needs to be precise.”  
  
“Don’t forget that you swore to tell the truth,” Kira adds acerbically.  
  
Garak nods brightly. “We all heard you.”  
  
Agathe doesn’t want it to go on record that Julian hurt her feelings. It’s not fair to him. _Love doesn’t keep a record of wrongs._  
  
But she can’t lie. Something bad will happen if she lies. It _IS_ true that Julian hurt her feelings. And maybe it’s not so bad if he hears her say it out loud. She already told him about it earlier today.   
  
“Yes,” she concedes. “Yes, the doctor hurt my feelings.”  
  
“Did you become angry?” Dukat asks.  
  
“I did, but…but I don’t blame _him_ …I…I just felt angry at myself.”  
  
Dukat insists on precision. “Yes or no, Agat. Did you become angry?”  
  
This isn’t right. She doesn’t want Julian to hear that she became angry. She didn’t tell him that when they met for tea. What will he think if he hears her say it now? They won’t let her explain it in context. He won’t understand what she means.  
  
“I don’t want to say it.”  
  
Dukat nudges her lips with his treasure. “But you claimed that you want me to stuff your mouth. Are you changing your story now?”   
  
“No! Please! I need you!” Agathe starts to want to cry. She can’t because she has no tears, just as before. But she remembers that she can lick him. Oh, that feels good.  
  
It feels good, but it doesn’t release her from her obligation to answer his question.   
  
“Then tell us if you became angry, Agat. Yes or no. The truth.”  
  
It’s not _untrue._ She won’t get in trouble for admitting it.   
  
“Yes. Yes, I became angry.”   
  
It sounds true, but it feels like a lie…it implies that she blames Julian…she would _never_ blame Julian for her anger…she would never _swear to it._ It wasn’t his fault! She licks Dukat desperately, trying to soothe her growing anxiety. But the taste of him makes her feel worse. Oh, she needs him to dispel her emptiness, to relieve her, she needs him, _she needs him…_  
  
“Did you fuck me because you were angry?” he asks with deeply resonant authority.  
  
Agathe looks up at her god's flared neck and remembers fucking him. She imagines it right now. She thinks about how it feels to lie under him, pinned under his weight, just as she is on this table. She thinks about his thighs, how drunk they make her feel, like whiskey when she kisses them. She remembers the texture of his throat, how it feels on her tongue – different from the smoothness where she licks his treasure. His throat is scaled near his neck ridges – his scales drag roughly across her tongue and make her want him, want him, _crave_ him. She remembers his ridges – thick, bumpy, suckable – he _groans_ when she sucks them – she wants to feel all his vibrating groans again, she wants to suck him while he fucks her. She wants him, she wants him – even as Julian drills her, she wants her god.  
  
He demands the truth, so Agathe gives it to him.  
“I fucked you because I was horny for you. I’m horny for you _right now_. I feel your thighs. I want you to have me. I want you inside me.”  
  
It’s not good enough. The rules haven’t changed.  
“Yes or no, did you fuck me because you were angry?”  
  
“I was _HORNY_ for you because I was angry!”  
  
“But did you _fuck_ me because you were angry, Agat? Answer the question.”  
  
“ _Fuck you_ , _YES_! I’m telling you! I was angry and horny and so _I FUCKED YOU!”_  
  
“And do you swear that you want me even now?”  
“I do, I do, more than ever! I need to have you! Please! Please!”  
  
“Agat, answer – “  
_“YES! YES! YES! Please! PLEASE stuff my mouth with your treasure! Please. Pleeeease…”_ Agathe wishes she could add tears to her begging.  
  
“I will, Agat. I _will_ stuff your mouth – when you make your statement.”  
  
“What statement? I just said _’yes’_ to you…”  
_she said ’yes’ and she knows Julian heard it_  
  
Her god smiles down at her and presses his treasure tip to both her lips, a warm kiss of promise. Agathe kisses him back. She can’t help it. She needs him. She needs him inside her, inside her mouth.   
  
“What statement?” she asks again, kissing, kissing. _Ohhhhhhh_ she remembers she has hands. She holds his thighs and kisses him, kisses his treasure, kisses his warmth. She grips him and licks him and kisses him as he holds himself to her lips. He feels good wet. Warm and wet. She wants to make him warm and wet all over.   
  
His low, impassive voice. “Your full statement, Agat. The whole truth.”   
  
Agathe doesn’t understand yet. She turns her head slightly, to her left. Her god follows her mouth with his treasure so she can continue licking and kissing him while she searches Dax’s eyes for an answer.  
  
Dax speaks with blue-eyed coolness. “Let’s review the statements you’ve confirmed so far. Doctor Bashir hurt your feelings. You became angry and consequently horny for Gul Dukat. You fucked Gul Dukat and you still want him now. You want Gul Dukat to stuff your mouth with his treasure.”  
  
_Doctor Bashir_  
_Oh God_  
  
Now Agathe sees where this is going. We both do.   
  
She pauses mid-kiss. “No. No. No.”  
  
Her god lifts his treasure away from her mouth, frowning sternly.   
“Do you deny these statements now? Did you lie?”  
  
Our body feels a flash of cold, a sudden chill. It stings our face.   
  
We’re trapped. We’re trapped on the table under Dukat’s thighs. We’re trapped under everything we’ve already sworn ‘yes’ to.  
  
Everyone has heard what we’ve confirmed so far. We can’t back out now. They’ll think we’re lying if we change our story. Something terrible will happen if they think we’re lying.   
  
No, we can’t back out – we must be consistent. We must construct _one full statement_ that upholds everything we’ve sworn ‘yes’ to up until now. We must speak it and testify to the truth of it.  
  
_We must blame Julian for what happened with Dukat._  
  
We must blame Julian right in front of him where he’ll hear it, right on this table where he drills Agathe.  
He’ll hear us.   
He’ll hear _EVERYTHING_.  
  
It isn’t right. It’s twisting his words…his words in Ops…he didn’t mean to hurt us…  
  
Julian hasn’t said it yet – that he loves Agathe – but he treats her like he does.  
  
He’s loving her right now.  
  
He’s heard everything she has said.   
He’s heard her say she fucked Dukat and still wants more.  
He’s heard her begging Dukat to stuff her mouth with his treasure.  
He’s heard her licking and kissing Dukat.  
  
Julian has heard everything and still he drills her deeply and demonstratively, the way you drill someone you love. He drills her, he drills her, he doesn’t stop, _he treats her like he loves her._  
  
Julian never meant to hurt Agathe that day.  
  
He spoke out of character only because he _cared_ for her, because he had _feelings_ for her, because he wanted to hold her in his arms but tried to act professionally instead. He didn’t deny his hard words. He didn’t excuse them. He apologized for them.  
  
Now Agathe must take his words, take his feelings, take his _HEART_ and use it all _AGAINST_ him, against her Julian who only ever loves her, who never pushes her away, who kisses _HER_ heart, who might possibly even share his love and truth with _ME_ if she would only show me to him.   
  
But she won’t be able to show me to him. Not after this, not ever.   
Not after we’re going to blame him together – blame him for what he believes was _rape_.   
Not after we’re going to twist his words and his feelings against him, _right in front of him_ while he drills us and loves us.   
  
After we do this to him we will be dirt. After we blame him under oath we will only ever deserve to have our face fucked against the cold hard table by Agathe’s flared god.  
  
We have to do it. We know we have to do it. Something terrible will happen if we refuse. Refusing means we lied, that we’ve been lying all along. We can’t refuse. We have to speak. We have to make a statement.  
  
We don’t want to. We’re scared. We’re scared. We’re scared.  
  
I’m looking at Dukat’s thighs and they are not daddy thighs.  
  
_where is daddy?_  
  
I look to my right. Commander Sisko. Help. Help, please.  
  
Agathe reaches for him. Her hand is at the level of his pants. She thinks maybe if she touches his _authority_ nicely…if she can make it hard and stroke it just the way he likes it…then maybe he’ll help her…  
  
Sisko takes her hand, stops her, speaks. His voice is as warm as his hand.   
“No Agathe, that won’t work with me.”   
  
_daddy’s hand_  
  
My eyes hold all the water, as before. We look at Sisko through _my_ eyes now.  
  
“I’m scared, Commander,” Agathe tells him.  
  
“Why are you scared?”  
“I don’t know. I just am. Help me. Help me, please.”  
  
“What do you need me to do?” Sisko asks.  
  
I know what we need him to do.   
_I’ll tell him, Agathe. Let me talk to him._  
  
“Kiss me, Commander,” I whisper to him. “Kiss me like you kiss Jake. _Please_.”  
  
“Of course, sweetie. Don’t be scared. You’re doing fine. Just speak the whole truth and you’ll be okay.” He leans over and kisses Agathe’s face with tender daddy lips. He kisses her forehead, her cheeks, her jaw. His kisses are reassuring but impotent, like a winter sun that gives light but no heat. His daddy kisses feel good but can’t save us from what we must do.  
  
“Do you promise?” Agathe implores her flared god, looking up at him past Sisko’s daddy face.   
  
“Do I promise what?” His hard eyes focus on hers with patient menace.  
  
“Do you promise to stuff me with your treasure? If I make my statement?”  
  
“Only if it’s true, Agat. And it must be _your_ truth. Not what someone else has told you to say.”  
  
We understand that we must pull together all of our sworn statements and be convincing – we must sound like we _believe_ our conclusion – it must sound like _our_ truth, like it came from us, like nobody forced us to say it. And it must not sound like we are lying, because then everyone will know the _REAL_ whole truth and something terrible will happen.  
  
We must blame Julian like we _mean_ it. Only then will Agathe receive what she needs, what she deserves.   
Blaming Julian is the price we must pay to prevent something _bad_ from happening, and to be filled with Dukat’s treasure.  
  
I must help Agathe. I know how to do this. I did it before. We’re on my side of the black steel wall and I know my way around. She’s trying to stay blind, so I must lead her.  
  
I know how we can speak a lie but make it sound like we mean it.   
  
We must find the _truth_ in the lie, and focus our mind on it. It’s true that Julian hurt our feelings. It’s also true that we felt angry. If we bend and stretch our mind enough, we can even begin thinking it’s Julian’s fault that we fucked Gul Dukat. And it’s true that we want to fuck him again. If we use truth to _believe_ what we say, then we won’t _feel_ like we’re lying. That’s how we won’t _sound_ like we’re lying.   
  
We must also harden the soft part of us that wants to cry. We must not cry. Crying means we are lying, so we must never be seen crying.  
  
And we must not enjoy Julian drilling us. It must not feel good to us. We don’t want him to drill us. We don’t want it. We don’t love him. We can’t. We can’t let ourselves feel love for him. We must turn it off. Otherwise our love will be in our voice and they’ll think we’re lying.  
  
We must steadfastly look to Dukat. We must only want our god. We must keep our eyes on our god and his treasure and feel how we want _HIM_ and keep ourselves hardened and not cry. We must speak up and blame Julian with a clear strong audible voice using complete sentences in a full statement.   
  
Let’s speak, Agathe. We can do this. When we’re finished it will be over and relief will come, it will come in our throat.  
  
_what we are about to do, let’s do quickly_  
  
We speak. The statement rings out over the table.   
  
“I fucked Gul Dukat because I was angry. I was angry because Doctor Bashir spoke harshly to me and hurt my feelings after Justin died. I fucked Gul Dukat because Doctor Bashir made me feel bad, and now I want to keep fucking Gul Dukat because he makes me feel good.”  
  
_oh, our dark god glows_  
_we please him_  
_he fills us_  
_he takes us over_  
  
It should feel good now. Everything should feel good.   
  
Our god shoves his entire treasure into our mouth. He suffocates us completely – under his weight, between his thighs, down our throat – against the cold hard table. It is good, it is right. It should feel good.   
  
Commander Sisko’s daddy lips bless us all over our face. It should feel good.   
  
And Julian’s goodness – he hasn’t taken it from us. We drove our thankless nails into him but he still drills us deeply, he is still good to us. _It should feel good_.  
  
Oh but it _hurts,_ it hurts, his goodness _HURTS_ – his goodness _KILLS_ us now – we don’t _DESERVE_ his goodness, we should hurt, we should die, we should be _PUNISHED and DIE – it should never feel good to hurt Julian – never, NEVER –_  
  
  
  
  
  
Agathe came to herself in Julian’s arms, gripping his shoulders, kissing his chest with desperate abandon. The skin on his chest was smooth like Dukat’s treasure. She could feel Dukat on her lips and was trying to suck him into herself, trying to feel good. The more she sucked, the worse she felt. She was trapped in an unrelenting cycle of need and despair.   
  
Julian didn’t speak to her. He growled and rolled her over, tackling her, pinning her beneath himself – biologically activated. He moved inside her savagely – _trap her, kill her, eat her._ She cried out as he took her roughly, mindlessly.   
  
_kill me, kill me, kill me_  
  
She cried. Not sex cries. Guilt cries. Sorrow cries.   
She cried tears.   
  
She opened her mouth and bit down on his ridgeless neck to stuff herself with him, to stifle her cries so he wouldn’t wake up all the way and discover her tears. She clung to him as he slayed her and claimed her and owned her with his brutal goodness that she didn’t deserve.   
  
He came inside her but she didn’t watch it in her mind’s eye – instead she saw Dukat’s cum shooting down her throat, as she had begged for, as she had blamed Julian for. It felt good and it felt horrible. It loved her and it punished her.  
  



End file.
